JAMESTOWN – The Jamestown School Board will get its first look at the district’s 2014-2015 school budget when it meets tonight at Bush Elementary School.
Jamestown School Superintendent Tim Mains and Assistant Superintendent for Administration Dale Weatherlow will go over the tentative numbers with board members, which includes the specific spending gap the district will likely be faced with.
WRFA talked with Mains late last month about the upcoming budget process and he admitted that it will be a challenge.
“We’re very frustrated with the resources that we have available to build a budget with,” Mains said. “I can roll ahead and project certain expenses that we know we’re going to have, no matter what, and we have to find some way to fund them. But we still have a state not willing to provide the dollars that they promised us in order to do that.”
Mains adds that at this point, he’s not sure what the specific spending gap will look like, because lawmakers in Albany have yet to finalize the specific amount of school aid Jamestown is set to receive.
Tim Mains, superintendent of Jamestown Public Schools.
“I think what will happen is we’ll roll out a draft and there will be a gap,” Mains explained, adding, “I’m not going to propose how to close that gap until we see what the state does in adopting its budget and whether or not it will finally provide the equity and the funding that we deserve and that has been promised us and which, supposedly, the state has the ability to pay.”
Under the governor’s initial budget proposal, Jamestown is set to receive nearly $47.5 million in state aid, which is about $1,030,000 more than what it received for the current school year. However, Mains says that amount is still less than what the district was receiving in 2008 and it won’t be nearly enough to help close spending increases the district is facing.
“There are expenses that go up and I can’t control that,” Mains said. “There are contracts and people are entitled to certain raises, there’s utility costs that go up and there’s health insurance costs that goes up. There are known drivers for that and we try to offset that with other efficiencies.”
The current year’s Jamestown school budget is $73,370,000… which was $3.5 million less than the spending plan in 2012-2013.
Tonight’s school board meeting, which will include the budget roll out, begins at 7 p.m. at Bush Elementary School. It will be open to the public.
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