ST. REGIS FALLS — The St. Regis Falls Central School District Board of Education announced a new $9.7 million proposed 2024-25 budget following a board meeting on Tuesday. The revised budget comes more than a week after voters narrowly rejected the district’s initial proposed budget in a 107-120 vote and tied a school board race at 76 votes each on May 21.

St. Regis Falls was one of only 10 districts statewide that failed to pass a budget last week. When a budget is rejected by voters, school districts can choose to revert to a contingency budget with no tax levy increase, take a new budget proposal to voters or ask voters to vote again on the same budget. District Superintendent Nicole Eschler said on Thursday that the school board felt bringing a revised, reduced budget to the polls was the option that best honored voter feedback.

A budget hearing is set for 6 p.m. on June 10 at the school auditorium and the budget and school board re-vote will take place on June 18. New York school districts must have budgets in place by July 1.

The revised $9,791,580 proposed budget would decrease spending by $444,403, or 4.34%, from this year’s $9.6 million budget. The district’s first proposed budget came in around $9.9 million and decreased spending by $287,168.

The district’s proposed tax levy, or the amount of money collected from taxpayers, will remain the same as that in the first proposed budget — $3,144,467, which after exclusions amounts to an increase of 2.12% over this year’s levy and meets the state-imposed tax cap for the district. The district serves students from five different towns, all with different school tax rates. Under both budgets, the district proposes to raise tax rates by 2.15% in each town.

Eschler said that reducing the tax levy would’ve traded temporary relief for “long-term stress.”

“If we kept our levy around 2% for the next five years, with what we know about the foundation (aid) formula right now … we would be losing over $110,000 over the next five years if we even adjusted the levy at all right now,” she said.

School foundation aid, a type of state aid, changes every year depending on a particular formula. This year, Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed to change the formula that calculates this aid, which would’ve cut millions in aid to local schools. Hochul’s proposal was rejected by the state Legislature.

Aside from the tax levy, the budget would also be funded by $6.4 million in state aid, $40,000 in federal aid and $126,328 in “miscellaneous” funds, with no contributions from the district’s reserves or fund balance. This varies from the first proposed budget, which allocated $96,063 from fund balance and an additional $61,172 in miscellaneous funds to help fund the budget.

Eschler said that the reduction in revenue in the revised budget is due to several anticipated reductions, including BOCES aid.

“Now that we’re later in the school year, some of the thing that we had only estimated earlier, we now have some more precise numbers for, so we were able to do that as well,” she said.

The district’s initial proposed budget carried several cuts and reductions. This second proposed budget cuts a further $157,235, the bulk of which is a $145,980 cut to the instructional budget, which accounts for several vacant teaching positions that’ll go unfilled during the next school year, Eschler said.

Among cuts in the initial proposed budget carried over to the new proposal are several other already-vacant positions in the district, including a technology integration specialist, intervention teacher, a bus driver, human resources director, substitute teacher coordinator and social media coordinator. It also would eliminate funding for field trips not funded completely by grants and integrated Pre-K. The universal Pre-K program will remain intact.

Eschler said that the district chose to eliminate integrated Pre-K due to a lack of both students and staff in the program.

“We hoped to have 12 students in that program. … It was between six and eight most of the year,” she said. “We were not adequately staffed for the needs of the students in the beginning, so we were catching our tail all year, then we didn’t generate the revenue that we had hoped to offset expenses of the program, so our general fund ended up supporting far more than we had ever planned for.”

The budget would combine two school principal positions into one K-12 position. Last November, Middle-High School Principal Danielle Emburey and Elementary School Principal Wendie Boucher were both fired on the same day. The school board and district superintendent declined to publicly state a reason for the firings at the time. The district is currently accepting applications for one K-12 school principal with a salary range of $80,000 to $110,000. According to budget documents, the school principals’ salaries for 2023-24 were $47,700 and $47,250.

The budget would also reduce — though not completely eliminate — printing costs, substitutes, software subscriptions, teaching assistant positions and overtime payments for salaried staff, which is typically granted in school districts when staff take on extra responsibilities like advising or chaperoning.

A total of 227 votes were cast in the May 21 vote, significantly higher than last year, when only 130 ballots were cast. Voters also rejected 126-104 a proposition that would’ve authorized the district to purchase a school bus and a van, but approved a second proposition 116-113 that authorized the district to establish a $375,000 capital reserve fund. A capital reserve fund is similar to a savings account, though the use of the funds can only be granted via voter approval in a future referendum. When districts use capital reserve funds to fund capital projects, the state may chip in more aid for that particular project.

Maggie Engels was reelected to the school board with 169 votes, while write-in candidate Lisa Jimenez was elected with 113 votes. The third seat on the school board tied at 76 votes between incumbent board president Michelle Brockway and write-in candidate Rick Yaddow, who’ll face off again in the polls on June 18.