Schools
Fort Lee School Board Adopts $59M Preliminary Budget
Preliminary budget provides a glimpse, but full details of the budget for the 2012-2013 will come later, when the BOE holds its annual budget hearing.
The adopted a preliminary roughly $59 million budget Monday for the 2012-2013 school year, incorporating more $1.9 million in state aid announced last week.
Interim Superintendent of Schools Steven Engravalle said the school board “will be presenting a much more detailed budget expenditure explanation at a later date” but detailed some of the “recommended plans” of the preliminary budget adopted Monday at the BOE’s regular business meeting at .
Included in the proposed budget, which was reviewed and modified by the school board’s Finance Committee, according to the resolution, are “certain [recommendations] to improve our curriculum,” Engravalle said.
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Among those recommendations, as detailed by Engravalle at the meeting, are as follows:
- New textbook purchases for Language Arts and Math for grades K-8
- Improvements to facilities such as “balancing our heat in School No. 2 and School No. 3”
- “Rejuvenation” of the Fort Lee High School gymnasium and auditorium
- Improvements to the fire systems at Schools No. 1 and No. 3 and Lewis F. Cole Middle School
“Those systems are outdated, and we’re unable to make those repairs,” Engravalle explained. “We’ve been cited by our fire officials that those are immediate repairs that needed to be done.”
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- Security upgrades enabling “better connectivity between our police department and our schools”
- Computer upgrades in all schools “where needed”
“They’re have been many upgrades already,” Engravalle further elaborated. “But we’re going to be upgrading in all the locations that haven’t been on a five-year cycle and begin to put our schools on a five-year cycle and put the most modern resources in the hands of our teachers and students.”
- Removing the activity fee at Fort Lee High School
“That was something that has caused a great deal of discussion,” Engravalle said. “We feel that our students deserve that activity fee get reinstated as part of the general fund.”
Below is look at the preliminary budget adopted by the Fort Lee BOE Monday:
EXPENDITURES General Current Expenses $55,152,505 Capital Outlay $1,044,756 Special Revenue $1,567,086 Debt Service $1,400,000 TOTAL $59,164,347
“We’ll discuss [the budget] more in detail when we do a budget hearing,” Engravalle said Monday.
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