Shelly O’Boyle, Frewsburg Central School superintendent, is pictured during a recent Board of Education meeting discussing what possible state aid cuts would mean for the district’s revenues.

FREWSBURG — Frewsburg Central School officials have come to a general agreement on a 2020-21 budget, but the plan is on hold until pending possible state aid cuts.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said in past weeks that state aid cuts are possible if the state doesn’t receive additional federal aid soon, including floating the idea of a 50% state aid cut to schools. Shelly O’Boyle, Frewsburg Central School superintendent, and Jerome Lee-Yaw, district business executive, told school board members recently that a 10% state aid cut would mean a $759,639 decrease in Frewsburg’s revenues while a 20% cut would equal $1,519,279. A 30% cut in aid would cut district revenues by $2,278,918 and a 50% cut would mean the district loses $3,798,197.

With so much uncertainty, O’Boyle said the district is conducting a cash flow study, stopped spending money if possible and is coming up with a reserve plan. The cash flow study will determine the district’s end-of-year revenues and spending.

“As of right now it does not look like we need to go out for a revenue anticipation note,” O’Boyle said. “It looks like we have enough cash flow to get through this school year, or the rest of this school year. Again, we don’t know if we’re going to get the $2 million of aid that we’re still owed for this year. We’re still waiting to see that. And, I told you before we have stopped discretionary spending and we’re also working on a reserve plan that we will present to the board in the very near future.”

O’Boyle is anticipating a $10,000 increase in tuition payments from non-local students as well as using an additional $95,000 from the district’s unemployment and retirement contribution reserve funds. The athletics budget has been cut by $27,000 by eliminating new uniforms and elimination of a cross-trainer program. Cuts have also been made to legal expenses ($5,000), buildings and grounds ($37,000), transportation ($12,000), BOCES spending for technology ($85,799) and teacher retirement benefits ($50,000). The budget now stands at $18,062,844, a 1.62% increase from 2019-20, and would increase the tax levy 2.77%.

If there are additional state aid cuts based on the district’s Pandemic Adjustment Amount of $134,649 from the federal government, O’Boyle said the district plans to take the money from the technology budget for devices rather than personnel cuts.

“While this is great because we have balanced the budget by increasing our revenues and decreased our expenditures, it is a little worrisome in the future because there are only so many reserves or so much in the reserves that you can throw to the revenue side or if we get a decrease in tuition students or kids that the consortium may be sending us, it’s worrisome when you start increasing your revenue like this and decrease your expenses,” O’Boyle said. “We have not heard of any retirements as of yet. Every position we receive a retirement for we would obviously look at and maybe eliminate that position due to attrition rather than a cut. I think this year we can get away without cutting personnel, which would be my goal moving forward as well. You know since I’ve gotten here we’ve cut an administrator. Now we’re not replacing a second administrator. I’ve really been trying to right-size our district. There isn’t a lot of fat to cut in personnel.”