The Governor has had his say. I understand everything he said about "righting the ship", "forging a new future", etc...I also understand his desire to reduce funding to schools. I disagree with his assertions that schools can close the gaps he presented through the use of reserves and pay freezes however. We do not have enough reserves to fill the gap for longer than a year, and a pay freeze nets the District only 20% of the gap we are facing.
How big is the gap for West Genesee? Big. Well over $5M. There will be no way to close this gap and present a budget that is fiscally responsible to you without massive reductions to all areas of our operation. We are building a budget proposal that represents our best attempt at retaining opportunities for children while balancing the budget. I am in the process of notifying staff who will be affected by our budget reductions, and I will share more with the public once my staff have been made aware of the upcoming changes that we are going to need to make.
I have other much more positive news to share, but I will do so later in the week in another post. The two paragraphs above need some time to digest. Thank you.
Chris
