The Saranac Lake Central School District offices and high school are seen on Wednesday. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

SARANAC LAKE — The Saranac Lake Central School District Board of Education unanimously adopted a $38.1 million budget on Wednesday. Now, the budget will go to the public for a final vote on May 20.

The district is expecting to make three layoffs with this budget, and eliminate eight more positions through attrition, amid ongoing student enrollment decline.

The budget would meet the tax cap and account for potential federal aid cuts. For more information on the budget, go to tinyurl.com/3bc6ac29.

SLCSD Superintendent Diane Fox said the budget calls for eight full-time equivalent reductions in staff through retirement and resignations, as well as three FTE cuts through layoffs. On Wednesday, she said these three positions are an elementary educator, a special educator and a reading specialist.

Since staff are unionized, reductions are done by who has the least seniority. These staff reductions are hard, Fox said.

Student enrollment numbers have been declining for years now. Fox said the staffing cuts maintain the 1:7 staff-to-student ratio the district has held for years, and has no cuts to programming.

Fox said the district needs to be respectful of the community who pays the taxes for the school budget, and that with enrollment down, they do not need the same level of staff to maintain their programming as was needed for larger student numbers.

Fox points out that the budget cuts a lot of spending in the non-personnel area. Almost all of the non-personnel spending lines are decreased — equipment, fuel, supplies, software, tuition, textbooks — resulting in $488,707 in spending cuts. Still, that’s just a fraction of the budget. Salaries and benefits make up 75% of the district budget.

Salaries for instructional and non-instructional staff at the district are projected to total $16,368,356 in the coming year. There is an expected $65,432 increase in instructional salaries next year, even with the planned cuts, because the district is shifting several salaries from federal grants with murky futures into the general budget. There is also an expected $103,671 decrease in non-instructional salaries. Without staff reductions, these salaries would total $17,593,281. There are also several other benefit lines that are reduced by staff reductions.

–

‘Heart-wrenching’

–

Sara Shatraw, a third-grade teacher at Petrova Elementary and the building representative for the Saranac Lake Teacher’s Association, read a letter from Lisa Parent, a teacher at Petrova.

Shatraw said Parent was born and raised in Saranac Lake and was able to return to her hometown with her family last July to work at Petrova as an Academic Intervention Services teacher helping students who are struggling in certain subjects.

Her position has been eliminated in the budget, a cut she called “heart-wrenching.” Parent said she hopes this is not the end of her career in SLCSD.

“I look forward to the time when I’m able to give back again to the students, the way my teachers did,” she wrote.

Janelle Bennett, an art teacher at Petrova Middle School and member of the SLTA executive committee, read a letter titled “Imagine” by an anonymous member of the teaching faculty whose position will be cut.

The letter asked the board to imagine they attended school in every building in the district, were inspired to become a teacher because of their teachers, moved away, moved back and worked in the same school they attended.

They described the successes and joy they found as an educator here, including winning NBC5’s “School Superstar” award.

The anonymous letter writer said they never felt like a number as a student at SLCSD. They asked the board to imagine their position was cut due to budget issues.

“You have officially just become a number after all,” they wrote.

Board member Joe Henderson told the union members he hears their concerns and, as a former union member himself, understands their frustration. He said he is “endlessly frustrated by the declining enrollment problem” and that the board is constantly having to react to structural issues.

When it comes to enrollment decline, he said the school board can only do so much — it’s a communitywide issue that needs to be addressed.

“I think this community needs to have a serious discussion over whether we are an affordable and inclusive community or whether we are an unaffordable and exclusive community,” Henderson said.

Ultimately, he voted for the budget.

Karen Miemis, a sixth-grade English Language Arts teacher at Petrova Middle School and co-President of the SLTA, asked the district to fully fund these “crucial positions.” She acknowledged the district’s financial challenges but said these salaries can be preserved by pulling from reserves.

Losing teachers means losing the heart of their classrooms, she said.

“Losing even one member diminishes the quality of education and weakens our district’s foundation,” Miemis said.

She said it’s a loss to the community and discourages families from moving here, which lowers enrollment more — creating a “negative feedback loop.”

If enrollment is declining, Miemis said to reduce administration, too. The district has eight administrators who can can share responsibilities, she said.

Fox said that they’re required to have one administrator in each school — Petrova Middle and Elementary are considered two schools though they share a building — and a special education administrator. There’s also an associate principal at the high school. The district added one administrator — a curriculum coordinator — several years ago after the middle school was ranked in the bottom 5% of the state in terms of grades 3-8 testing. Fox said the district is now out of that zone and in 2024 was in the top three out of 12 comparable districts.

Last month, SLTA Vice President Joe Thill asked the administration to cut through attrition. Though retirement numbers are low this year, he said that is an anomaly and there is an expected wave of retirement in the next 4 to 8 years — adding that the district will need experienced, dedicated teachers to take the reins when veteran staff retire en masse.

Ellen Yousey, a retired teaching assistant and SLTA member, recalled sitting on the district’s now-defunct budget advisory committee in the early 2010s and suggested the board reinstate it. This committee was made up of members of the public, union, staff, board and administration, and Yousey said, made for transparent and collaborative decisions.

–

The budget

–

The tentative budget anticipates spending exactly $38.1 million — $800,000, or 2.14%, more than last year.

To pay for this, the district plans to collect, or levy, $25,577,281 in taxes — $1,084,343 more than the current year, a 4.44% increase — but exactly at the tax cap. This cap limits the amount districts can raise the levy year-to-year, and SLCSD’s cap was set this year at 4.44%

The district is predicting $38.1 million in revenue, $800,000 more than last year.

The tax rate per $1,000 of assessed value will be different for each of the seven towns in the district, as each town has a different equalization rate. The district will calculate the exact tax rate for each town later.

Exactly how much the district will get in state aid is unknown, since everyone is still waiting on the state to pass its budget that was due April 1. Also, federal grants are in a murky position as the federal Education Department is dismantled. These federal grants — totaling around $700,000 for SLCSD — have been promised, but Fox has shifted the positions funded by these federal grants into the general budget in anticipation of something going awry. The general budget absorbed around $400,000 to keep special education, counseling and academic intervention staff next year without having to rely on these grants to fund those positions.

To learn more about the district’s plans to adapt to the federal changes, go to tinyurl.com/ymhvew3k.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Education sent a letter to state education departments requesting every school district in the country sign a certification that they are not using diversity, equity and inclusion programs that are deemed discriminatory by the federal government, or they could face the federal government cutting their funds. New York’s Education Department has responded with a letter to USDOE, saying the federal government’s request is redundant and lacking authority. To learn more about this, go to tinyurl.com/285txp88.

–

Election

–

There will also be two school board seats up for election on the ballot on May 20. The seats are for Chair Mark Farmer and member Zach Randolph’s positions. They both have the option of running again.

Packets on filing to run are available in the district clerk’s office. The deadline to file petitions with signatures is April 21 by 4 p.m.

District Clerk Gina Pollock said she wanted to make sure people register to vote. Last year amid the “hot topic” of the turf field vote, several people showed up to cast ballots, but couldn’t vote because they weren’t registered. To learn how to register to vote, contact your county board of elections in Essex, Franklin or Clinton county.

On May 20, the election and budget vote will be held in the auditorium lobby of the High School in door number five from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.