Debra Winter, the Springs School District superintendent, does not want to imagine Springs with class sizes of 30 children or more. At present, enrollment records show average elementary-class sizes ranging from 17 to 23 children.
“With our needs, I can’t even think about it,” she said, referring not just to the general student population but also to the special education kids and students working in English for the first time who are learning side by side every day.
Ms. Winter does not want to imagine a Springs School without the annual fourth grade opera, a tradition dating back to the 1990s that is unique on the South Fork. She does not want to imagine a school without the Robotics Club, without art and music programs, without team sports and other after-school programs that support working families who need activities for their children in the afternoons. She does not want to imagine a school devoid of security guards who watch out for students’ safety.
But all of these things are potentially in danger of being lost at Springs, the South Fork school district that stands out for shouldering an unusually heavy burden, as home to a large concentration of school-age kids while simultaneously having a pinched tax base and fewer taxable businesses.
Springs has put a $37.8-million spending plan on the May 21 budget ballot for the 2024-25 school year. The proposed tax-levy increase is 10.8 percent — exceeding New York State’s cap on tax-levy increases by about eight percentage points.
Each of those percentage points, Ms. Winter said, amounts to around $330,000 that would have to be cut from the budget if the plan fails to gain the required 60-percent supermajority of voter approval to pass.
“We don’t want to be doom-and-gloom. We don’t want to twist people’s arms. We want people to understand that we know this is a big ask,” Ms. Winter acknowledged this week in speaking in depth about the proposed budget.
Reading a Priority
One major rising cost is for a revamped reading curriculum, called the Science of Reading, that will require significant teacher training and new classroom materials. In a budget workshop in March, Erik Kelt, the school principal, described this new approach as based on “50-plus years of interdisciplinary research that documents and describes how children develop reading and writing skills and competencies.”
Ms. Winter said this week that “the research is very clear that no matter what program you have, kids need to be reading proficiently by third grade,” Ms. Winter said.
Last year’s English test scores fluctuated greatly across the grade levels; for instance, only 29 percent of fifth graders scored as “proficient or above” in English, but 68 percent of seventh graders scored proficient or above.
The 2024-25 budget plan supports the Science of Reading program but, elsewhere, the district is holding the line on supplies and textbooks. Looking closely at costs for those categories, the line-by-line budget plan — which is available on the school district website — shows a zero-percent increase across the grade levels. For each grade level, kindergarten through sixth, teachers will share just $800 for supplies for the entire year.
Safety and Security
Another area of focus in the school budget is student safety and campus security, which Ms. Winter defines in multiple ways.
The budget plan maintains money for the school’s security team, which includes guards who are former police officers. But it also includes money for mental health services, guidance counselors, and a school psychologist. This is also part of school safety, Ms. Winter said.
“You still see reports of guns being brought to school, of children wanting to take their own lives,” she said. “These are kids. Some of them have really tough lives. That leads into the mental health piece.”
Data protection and cybersecurity also fall under this rubric. “When I got here seven years ago, there was no data privacy protection,’” she said. “That now costs us over $80,000 a year to safeguard our data.”
Tuition Costs, Alone
Springs pays tuition to send kids in ninth through 12th grades to East Hampton High School. Next year, due to enrollment changes and a previously negotiated 2-percent increase in the tuition rate, Springs expects to spend about $9.35 million, or 8.7 percent more than it did this year, for general education students, plus $2.6 million for special education, an increase of 14.1 percent.
“I’m pretty confident in the number we put in for tuition,” Ms. Winter said. “We’ve seen our highs, we’ve seen our lows, and I think we’ve come to a good number. But if you said, ‘Deb, can we cut that back? We think you have too much money in for tuition,’ I can do that, but if I’m wrong, we have to pay the tuition bill and where am I going to get that money from? . . . Something’s got to give — that’s a fixed cost. That impacts prekindergarten through eighth grade. Where else would we get the money from? How do you balance that budget?”
These tuition increases alone outpace what Springs was allowed under the state’s tax cap rules. A tax-cap-compliant budget would have meant a tax-levy increase of 2.37 percent.
Meanwhile, health insurance for employees is rising 6 percent, or $351,714, up to $4.33 million. Social Security costs are rising by nearly 21 percent, or $193,500, up to $1.13 million.
The cost of custodial materials and supplies is more than doubling, up to $107,750. “I don’t think you can put a price tag on maintaining what this community has invested in,” Ms. Winter said. “We all know what it takes to maintain our homes — why would this be different?”
There is a whopping 87.5-percent increase to the cost of the annual tax anticipation note (TAN), the short-term borrowing solution that schools rely on before property taxes begin flowing into district coffers in December each year. This year, Springs budgeted $177,534 in interest for its TAN, and next year it appears it will cost $332,877.
What Voters Are Saying
Arthur Goldman, a Springs resident who was a teacher for 23 years in the neighboring East Hampton School District, is going to vote “yes” and he hopes others will, too.
“I think the taxpayers and parents in Springs are smart enough to realize they’re not going to achieve much by shortchanging education in the district,” he said. “School budgets are a no-brainer for me, unless things are completely haywire. Springs has been as responsible as they can be. But we can just go so far, and then we have to go back to the taxpayers.”
“I don’t wish the kids to be lacking,” said Christine Ganitsch, a full-time resident since 2012, who is widowed and never had children. She plans to vote yes, but “reluctantly, as serious consideration must be given to school district consolidation in East Hampton.”
She said her household budget can absorb a tax increase. That may not be the case for others with low or fixed incomes in Springs. The school district says that for a house with a market value of $1 million, the tax increase would be approximately $637 for the year.
“The first item that usually is considered ‘secondary,’ i.e., not important, are arts, music, et cetera,” Ms. Ganitsch said in an email. “So much evidence shows these sorts of programs are exactly what kids need for so many reasons. . . . The world needs kids who can think, create, and work collaboratively.”
Loring Bolger, another longtime Springs resident who heads the hamlet’s Citizens Advisory Committee, is also a reluctant supporter. “What can you do? You’re between a rock and a hard place,” she said. “Although I think this is onerous for many people in Springs, which is a hamlet with a very high lower-income population, I think we have to support it because those kids need to be educated. That’s where I am. I don’t know what can be done on the local level to make this more palatable.”
Frank Riina has been a Springs resident for more than 20 years. He has toured the school and seen the needs up-close, he said, and he, too, will vote yes. “The Springs School has created a real sense of community where parents, teachers, and students are actively involved in what the school is offering and doing. The teachers are sincere and the students I have met are joyful participants,” he said, via email. “. . . As a parent and as a former teacher, I very much value education. Our children are our future and they deserve the resources needed for a productive future.”
Not everyone is on board. The Springs district has a perennial critic in David Buda, who has closely watchdogged the rising budgets over the last two decades. During an April 9 meeting, he said, “Yes, life is getting more expensive and there are a lot of expenses you have no control over, but it’s going to be a hard sell for the taxpayers. You may have reached the point where maintaining all of your programs and all of your staff is just not viable and necessary in the minds of the people who have to fund your budget.”
‘A Hard Balance’
Voting will take place on Tuesday, May 21, in the school library from 1 to 9 p.m.
“This board of education is really concerned about the kids and the taxpayers, and that’s a hard balance,” Ms. Winter said. “I know what this community has given so far to Springs, and I know this is a big, big ask. I do. I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t really needed. There are no extras in here. It’s to maintain what we currently have, give our kids what they need.”