PINE BUSH – "I don't like to make cuts, nobody does," said Superintendant Philip Steinberg at the Pine Bush School District Board of Education Meeting, January 27. "But we can't spend money we don't have."

That uncomfortable truth hovered over the meeting, which had brought out an unusually large contingent of interested parties.

Assistant Superintendant Deborha Brush made a presentation of the Operations and Maintenance section of the school budget for 2009/2010. Just listing the department's responsibilities and how they are dealt with demonstrated that the Pine Bush School District has worked hard to be efficient.

For example, there are 779,005 square feet of buildings to clean. There are 26 night cleaners, and so each cleaner deals with 29,962 square feet. The "rule of thumb" in operations like this is that a cleaner will handle up to 23,000 square feet.

Brush then showed items from the budget for Operations and Maintenance, including replacing hot water heaters in Crispell and Pine Bush Elementary at $3,500 apiece. There is $25,000 for window maintenance work at Crispell and $46,850 for painting the corridors at Pakanasink and Crispell. Items that had been requested but were not funded in the budget included: trucks, $40-45,000 apiece; paving, $800,000; and 9 vacuum cleaners and 2 floor scrubbers, $10,000.

Superintendant Steinberg took over to discuss cuts in technology. This year computer purchases have been frozen. The district has 1,695 computers and will not be adding to that total this year. That is calculated to save $175,000.

In addition the film library and delivery (through BOCES) will be deleted. Eight teaching assistants are to be trained to be able to address computer hardware and software issues throughout the district. Steinberg sees this as a way to make considerable savings down the road.

Sports are taking a cut, too, as expected. A 10% cut in the sports budget means that a number of sports teams will be cut. The cuts involve softball, basketball, soccer, baseball and football, and have been made where they will do the least damage to the school's sporting programs. Steinberg said, "We looked at where we had duplication, and we cut there. So we cut one modified girls' basketball team. We cut freshman girls' basketball and modified 'A' football.

Board member Joseph Peluso asked how much would be saved with these kinds of cuts and was told that $32,000 would be saved on clubs and $100,000 on sports teams.

Steinberg went on to say, "We're looking at a 10% cut for the athletic department, but obviously, we're trying not to cut any more than we absolutely have to. As someone who was a player and a coach, I hate doing this, but we have to make cuts, whether we like it or not."

Assistant Superintendant Joan Carbone then discussed the District Class Size Policy which was given a second reading at the meeting and approved. Under the new policy class sizes will grow at every grade level. The impact on staffing will be a reduction of 12 teaching positions at Elementary level, 4 at Middle School level and 16 full time positions at High School level.

Carbone explained that this was just a preliminary estimate and that no decisions had yet been made on what and where to cut. If Federal or State moneys came through in time then other actions might be taken instead.

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