Carla McLaud, President of the PBTA said, "We suggested it. This is a trade off on these conference days that have been used for professional development. We have instructional days, which are teaching days, and these four Superintendent's Conference Days, which are for professional development. The fact is that we were thinking that the budget doesn't have money now for speakers and substantive professional development, so this seemed like a logical way to save some money."

Teachers will have those two days off, and not be paid for them. The money saved will amount to something like $350,000.

Roseanne Sullivan, President of the Board of Education said, "I think this proves that we are all willing to work together to make this very difficult budget process work. It's a great idea; it's not taking away any education time, and we will be able to provide the required professional development hours."

The Property Tax Cap Bill Proposed for the 2012-2013 School Year According to legislation S2706/A3982, "This represents a complete change in how voters are involved with school district finances. Voters will no longer be voting on a set budget, authorizing a school district to spend a specific amount of money. Voters will now be determining the total tax levy, excluding any capital tax levy, that a school district would be authorized to raise. From there, the school board would establish the district's budget, based on the voter determined tax levy and estimated state aid. As such, this proposal eliminates all relevant provisions dealing with a contingent budget." The limit on tax levy increases is arrived at through a formula designed to restrain any increase. If the proposed tax levy exceeds a predetermined tax levy limit (based on the previous year's levy and an inflation factor), more than 60 percent of the votes must be in the affirmative. If the proposed tax levy does not exceed the tax levy limit, more than 50 percent of the votes must be in the affirmative. And, if the taxy levy proposition is defeated, a new one must be submitted by the third Tuesday in June. If that also fails to pass, the Board of Education must adopt a budget with a taxy levy no greater than that of the prior year, in other words a 0 percent increase.

Phil Steinberg, Superintendent of Schools, said "I'm glad that we were able to problem solve in a collaborative way and come up with this plan which will save jobs. The money that we save on this will be used to save about five jobs, maybe a little more."

Sullivan made another point. "The Governor said we had to come up with creativity in the face of the budget situation, and that's what we have here, a good step towards creative solutions."

Steinberg also spoke about the district's incentive program to encourage teacher retirements. "We hope that that will allow us to save some more layoffs. We'll see how many we might get from that. But the other thing with the incentive is that it will allow us to plan potential retirements better for the years 2012 and 2013."

Another bit of good news came through on Friday, April 1. The State Aid Projections were published. And while it was clear that Pine Bush was receiving the biggest cuts on the basis of the population affected, there was an adjustment to the cuts from $9,599,999 to $8,727,044.

Deborha Brush, Assistant Superintendent of Administrative Services, noted that while the "Pine Bush state aid run shows an $872,955 GEA Restoration, we only really get $384,941 as 'new money' to use because our estimated state aid scenarios from the Governor [back in February] were higher — we used estimated aid from February of $42,921,018 in our budget scenarios and this aid is $43,305,959 for a difference of $384,941."

Steinberg added that he would like to use that money to save jobs. "But we will be discussing all possibilities."

"Next year there will be a 2 percent tax cap. But despite what the Governor might say, it's actually a zero percent tax cap. Here's how it works. If a district's budget passes by 60 percent or more, than you can go higher than 2 percent. However, here's the rub. If a budget passes by 50 percent or less, than the tax increase is limited to zero percent." (See sidebar for details)

"And, of course, expenses and contracted costs will increase anyway."