VENTNOR – After residents and public officials challenged the school district’s budget plans at the 11th hour last year, the Ventnor Board of Education Wednesday, Nov. 14 agreed things will be handled differently this year.
The board agreed to an “transparent and open” policy for budget preparations that would give residents a chance to ask questions before the budget is finalized.
District officials approved a budget timeline of self-imposed and state mandated deadlines for submitting the 2019-2020 to the Atlantic County Executive Superintendent of Schools on March 22, 2019. The board’s public budget hearing is scheduled for March 27, 2019 and the Board of School Estimates is scheduled to certify the budget on April 3, 2019.
Last year, the Board of School Estimates cut $1.3 million reserved for capital projects from the district’s proposed operating budget and agreed instead to fund the district’s five-year capital plan by issuing a $9.3 million bond. The move reduced last year’s tax rate by 3.2 cents and city officials projected the bond would reduce the tax rate by 13.6 cents over five years.
School board President James Pacanowski said the administration should inform the Board of Commissioners about the budget sooner than it did last year.
Future board meeting agendas will include a section for discussion of the budget as it is formulated, Business Administrator and Board Secretary Terri Nowotny said. She suggested board meetings could be held a half-hour or hour earlier than the normal 6 p.m. meeting time to allow ample time for discussion.
“We are hoping the city will be able to send a representative, so they can be involved from the beginning as well,” she said. “If not, we will forward information to them, so they can be involved in the process from the beginning.”
Nowotny said the district could work on the appropriations side of the budget, but state aid figures will not be announced until Feb. 28, 2019.
She said the legislature is anticipating a 13 percent reduction in Adjustment Aid, which replenishes some of the funding lost when state aid calculations were revised in 2008. Last year, the district received $658,541 in Adjustment Aid. Nowotny said the district is anticipating a reduction of $85,610.
“We will anticipate that early on” in the budget process, she said.
The timeline anticipates providing the city with a copy of the budget on March 15, 2019, which would “give them a couple weeks to look at it” before the Board of School Estimates meeting on April 3, 2019, she said.
“I think we need to get it to the city sooner,” Pacanowski said. “If we are going to get it to the county superintendent by March 7, I don’t see why we can’t get it to the city around that same date. It at least gives them an extra week.”
At a prior board meeting, resident Xan Grant suggested that the board “feed the sharks before we go swimming with them” by allowing residents to submit questions on the school district website. He said it would be a “low cost, high impact” digital public information campaign promoting budget meetings to the public.
A digital forum would inform residents about the budget, allow them to submit questions online, and obtain answers to their questions at board meetings before the budget is finalized, Pacanowski said.
Initial discussions on the budget will begin at the Dec. 19 meeting, he said.
Ventnor City Education Association President Gina Perkins said that over her 20 years in the district, she has never seen parents or residents come to the board to ask questions about the school budget.
“They don’t know what it takes to run a school,” Perkins said.
“We don’t think they are going to,” Pacanowski said. “At least with a full sense transparency and openness, we are going to give them the opportunity. If they don’t, then nobody can come back to us and say we didn’t give them the chance.”
Perkins repeated her plea from last year in asking the board to support the teachers and educational programs.
“You are our advocate and we need you to stand tall for us in keeping this school great and maintaining what we have,” she said.
“We will, and we have,” Pacanowski said.
Ventnor Middle School Principal Rob Baker asked for reassurance that all questions fielded by residents on the website, on social media or directly to board members on the street would be shared with administration.
“We want to hear the questions too,” he said.
All questions will be discussed at board meetings, Pacanowski said.
Ventnor School Budget Timeline
