Schenectady City School District Forum -

The Schenectady City School District is pleased to offer this forum/threaded discussion for you to talk about the budget.

This forum is being monitored. Any posts that include inappropriate content or language will be edited or removed.

If you have a question for Superintendent Ely, please post your question on the Q & A post located under "Budget."

Thank

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If you have a question you would like to ask Superintendent Ely regarding the Budget, please post it here. The Superintendent will respond on the discussion board as soon as possible.

Thank you.

I saw the post regarding the IB program at the high school and wonder if that will be funded fully in the future at the expense of the more average student or if the district will focus on keeping staff and decent class sizes for all high school students first and then focusing on providing a few extras if possible?

Has the district considered going back to neighborhood schools and eliminating some of the huge cost of our buses?

Will student demographics be taken into consideration when making decisions for the 2009-2010 budget? If a school or house within a school is more diverse, will there be an effort made to try not to reduce resources for those houses or schools?

I started a new thread, so comments would not get lost in the long other threads. The administrator can feel free to append this topic to the others if they see fit.

Here is my observation of this forum from the initial messages I just reviewed.

It seems so far to be dedicated to defending the status quo. I realize the administrator and other school district officials cannot get into …

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One of the most ridiculous ideas that has come out of the Governor's office is for school districts to use their fund balance to offset some of the cuts. Do school districts face state limits for how much their fund balance has? What is the fund balance for Schenectady and are there plans to try to increase it for the future, in case upcoming budget years are even worse?

How much is the 2008-2009 budget and what percentage of the budget is spent directly on student instruction? How much is spent on administrative/operational costs and what is this percentage?

I hope the superintendent and school board remember the human side of the possible 100 staff members who coudl get laid off according to the article in today's gazette. I do not own a house but would personally gladly pay a higher rent for the owner if taxes were increased to prevent such a possible draconian cut. THere are so many outstanding teachers that it is hard to imagine many of them …

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