East Ramapo board reviews preliminary 2025–26 budget; staff cite coding corrections, staffing shortfalls and proposed capital transfers

The East Ramapo Central School District Board of Education received a preliminary presentation of the 2025–26 revenue and expenditure budget at its meeting. Assistant Superintendent for Business Mr. Stark told the board the district has reclassified a number of expenses that were previously miscoded, updated pension and debt-service encumbrances for the current year, and built an initial draft for the coming fiscal year that includes new staffing requests and capital transfers funded partly from reserves.

Mr. Stark said the district’s January 31 expenditure report now includes salary increases from the recently settled teachers’ contract and employer contributions to the two pension systems (ERS and TRS) that had not been fully encumbered in earlier reports. He told trustees the report’s projected expenses “include all amounts from the general fund that have been expensed or encumbered through 01/31/2024.” He also said the transportation line is projecting a roughly $15,000,000 surplus for the current year because the district budgeted about $72,000,000 for transportation but now projects spending around $57,000,000.

On revenue, the administration presented an updated aid and levy calculation. Mr. Stark described the state-required tax-cap computation using the prior-year levy ($162,800,000), the tax-base growth factor supplied by the New York State Office of Real Property Services (ORPS), current-year pilot amounts, and statutory exclusions for capital and building aid. He said the district’s maximum allowable levy, before board choices, calculates to $167,676,587—an increase of about $4.8 million (roughly 2.99%). The draft budget used about half of that allowable increase (1.49%) as a planning assumption. Mr. Stark also said Foundation Aid for the district rose approximately 14% in the executive aid run, driven in part by updated wealth ratios and improved reporting of multilingual students.

The presentation identified 44 unfilled full-time equivalent (FTE) positions in the current budget and listed additional staffing the administration proposes for next year. Among items the presentation listed as open or under-resourced were multilingual/ELL teachers (the presenter cited a shortfall described in the slides as 46 multilingual education teachers), six full-time speech therapists, one nurse, multiple clerical positions across departments, four transportation office clerical openings, 10 teaching assistants, three grounds workers, six maintenance workers, six security aides, 35 building-level permanent substitute teachers, and 22 custodial workers currently employed as substitutes. Trustees and staff acknowledged the numbers are complex: at one point the assistant superintendent described 44 unfilled FTEs and later the slides listed 46 multilingual teacher vacancies. Board members pressed staff for a clearer breakdown of how much of the current-year reported surplus results from vacancies (unfilled positions and substitutes) versus other accounting recategorizations.

Curriculum and instruction investments outlined by Assistant Superintendent Dr. Gonzalez included expanded literacy materials and training: adoption of American Reading Company curriculum (ARC Core and ARC Fusion) across K–8 sections, Wilson Language Training interventions K–12, a kindergarten “jump start” and other early-literacy work, expanded Project Lead the Way for career and technical education phased into high schools, and a districtwide summer book bundle for all students through Scholastic to combat summer learning loss. Dr. Gonzalez said the selected curricular investments were research-based and aimed at improving reading outcomes, noting that the state has emphasized the “science of reading.”

Capital and facilities needs were also part of the draft. The administration proposed a transfer to capital from fund balance (slides referenced a $5,250,000 transfer; presentation text elsewhere showed a $5,000,000 fund-balance appropriation for capital). Mr. Stark listed specific needs including boiler replacements, replacement of two chillers (Spring Valley High School and Chestnut Ridge Middle School), parking-lot and sidewalk repairs across multiple schools (presentation showed $1,400,000 for those repairs), and safety/parking-lot lighting improvements (presented as $850,000). Mr. Stark said some S/ARPA funds had already been used for paving and sidewalk work and that additional capital work would address remaining sites.

Trustees repeatedly asked for clearer, auditable documentation. Several members said they had been told in prior meetings that the district was short on cash yet now saw multi-year surpluses in the reports. One trustee characterized a multi-year surplus discussed in the meeting as “about $90,000,000” over three years; administration responded that prior-year surpluses roll into fund balance and that some prior-year figures included reclassifications (including federal ARP/ARPA transfers) that affected comparability. Trustees requested a cash-balance and bank-account breakdown, and Mr. Stark committed to providing a cash-balance report for the board by the next Tuesday meeting.

Mr. Stark emphasized that the draft is a first proposal. The administration plans further line-by-line presentations on March 4 and March 18 that will break out department-level expenditure requests and expected contract impacts. The board was reminded of the upcoming budget hearing on May 6, 2025, and the budget vote scheduled for May 20, 2025.