“It’s going to be a difficult process. A lot of things are really out of our control,” Adam Fine, the East Hampton School District superintendent, said during a Feb. 6 budget workshop that kicked off the school board’s discussion of the 2024-25 fiscal year budget.
Among those factors putting pressure on East Hampton’s budget are (in estimation) an $801,000 increase in health insurance costs, a $637,000 increase in special education expenses, a $394,000 increase in retirement contributions, $244,000 more for BOCES costs, a $125,000 increase for school security, and $179,000 more for athletics.
Taxpayers here should brace themselves for the possibility of a cap-piercing budget cycle, if the preliminary numbers unveiled on Feb. 6 pan out — and that was only a small snippet of them. The district is already looking at a budget-to-budget increase of more than $2.4 million. “We’re already over the [tax] cap and we haven’t even figured in salary increases yet,” Mr. Fine said.
Further complicating matters is a simultaneous drop in revenues. East Hampton’s “sending districts” — Springs, Amagansett, Montauk, Sagaponack, and Wainscott — are expected to collectively pay tuition for 50 to 70 fewer students next year, Mr. Fine said. At a rate, for the 2024-25 school year, of somewhere around $25,000 per student in the seventh through 12th grades — and even more if special education services are tallied in — that’s at least $1.25 million less in revenue.
“When we did our enrollment study, we knew there would be a projected decrease. It did not predict this. It’s really double the prediction number,” Mr. Fine said.
The earliest school aid number from New York State has East Hampton receiving about $774,000 less than it did this year, but that number has not yet been set in stone by the State Legislature.
All of it must be balanced with the needs of students and their families. Catching kids up from pandemic learning losses? Sports, clubs, musicals? The dual-language elementary school program? The high school science research program? They all come with a cost in the form of salaries to pay the teachers, coaches, and other employees who provide those resources for the students.
“This year, there is no reason that I would sacrifice our program to remain under the cap,” Mr. Fine said. “I think the most important thing for us is to maintain our academic program across the board. There are a lot of ramifications.”
East Hampton’s next board meeting and budget workshop is planned for March 5 at 6 p.m. in the school library.