Galloway BOE Announces Cuts to Proposed Budget

The Galloway Township Board of Education announced where it would be making cuts concerning the proposed 2011-12 budget at Monday night’s board meeting at Galloway Township Middle School.

It remained true to its word by not cutting courtesy busing to Arthur Rann Elementary School and leaving sports and clubs in tact.

Instead, it made the following monetary cuts:

• $154,367 out of charter school funding;
• $46,250 out of nurse salaries;
• $33,079 out of child study team teacher salaries;
• $3,617 out of the general administrator’s secretary’s salary;
• $17,950 in benefits;
• $72,747 out of resource room teacher’s salaries; and
• $34,568 out of intervention teacher’s salaries.

The total cuts made equaled the $362,578 mandated by the Galloway Township Council at its on the budget last Tuesday.

The general fund now amounts to $53,366,557 with a tax levy of $27,975,000. After adding in the Special Revenue Fund (A$1,600,8181) and the Debt Service Fund ($1,959,213 with a levy of $1,197,788), the total revised budget now stands at $56,926,588, with a total tax levy of $29,173,288.

“When it comes to the charter schools, the state gave us a certain amount of money to put in the budget, and we were later advised that amount would not be needed, so we were able to make those cuts,” said Galloway Township Superintendent of Schools Annette Giaquinto.

The cuts in teachers' pay were made possible by retirements, she added, stating that when teachers on the higher end of the pay scale retire, the district saves money by bringing in teachers who are just entering the school system.

“We are going to maintain all the nurses who currently work in the district,” Giaquinto said. “No program, person or service is being harmed by these reductions.”

The resolution to revise the budget was passed unanimously by the school board. The district will now submit the official revised budget to the county by the end of the week.

The township mandated the school district make the appropriate cuts at a special meeting to discuss the budget last Tuesday night. Galloway Township voters for the second year in a row.

Afterwards, the council discovered the budget included raises for administrators at 5.25 percent for this year. Harsher cuts were considered, but the council settled on $362,578, as long as none of those cuts applied to courtesy busing at Arthur Rann due to the school’s configuration and proximity to a main road.

The council also told the board not to cut from the children’s extracurricular activities. At the time, Giaquinto and board Vice President George Schwenger agreed to the stipulations, and the board followed through on that promise with its reductions Monday night.

Also at Monday night’s meeting, members of the Four Seasons retirement community continued to criticize board member Bob Iannacone for comments he made, stating there was a concentrated effort among members of the retirement community to defeat the school budget. One resident asked that Iannacone be censured; the other requested he resign, and pending his refusal, the board ask him to resign.

Board President Ernest Huggard stressed the board would issue no apology for Iannacone’s comments because when he made those comments to another news source, he did so as a citizen and not as a member of the board.

“He did not make those comments as a board member,” Huggard said. “What he says as a private citizen is of no concern to this board. When we sit here, we are a board. When we are not here, we are not a board. When we are not together, only I am the voice of the board.”