State budget boosts aid for RCS

The state budget will increase overall aid to RCS by a little more than $100,000 from earlier budget projections.

Interim Business Administrator Dennis Geisler said state aid projections – provided by Senator Neil Breslin’s office – show RCS receiving $16,838,881 million in state aid, $119,025 more than was proposed by former Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

The majority of the funding boost the district is slated to receive will be in aid for sharing services through the Board of Cooperative Education Services (BOCES), which RCS will receive an extra $84,699, and foundation aid, in which the district will receive an additional $27,686 in aid, Geisler said.

Overall, state aid to RCS is projected to increase approximately 3.5 percent from the 2007-08 school year.

While the state shows other areas of increase in state aid – notably in pre-kindergarten funding and building aid that amount to $554,852, he said those projections are flawed. Specifically, Geisler said, RCS is not eligible for the $267,891 in pre-k aid the state said RCS will receive and the building aid was actually owed to RCS in previous years.

“It was deferred. That is money that we were owed in the past,” he said.

The Board of Education will determine how to apply the additional state aid in time for its planned April 21 vote to approve a 2008-09 budget proposal.

The board is currently reviewing a $41.8 million budget proposal that would increase spending by 1.99 percent and the tax levy by 2.85 percent.