The reality of an uncertain fiscal future for school districts across New York state was front and center during this week’s meeting of the Jamestown Public Schools board of education.

In a powerpoint presented virtually, Superintendent Kevin Whitaker and Brittnay Spry, school business official, laid out what appears to be a challenging reality for the district with regard to aid from the New York State Division of Budget.

“I wanted to make sure we brought this up because the numbers involved here are so large that really people aren’t used to seeing them,” he said. “We’re used to seeing initial budget deficits of $1 million or $2 million and we’re talking about potentially $7 million or $8 million dollars this year and then another $5 million, $6 million, $7 million dollars next year.”

Citing the New York State Council of School Superintendents, Whitaker explained that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a plunge in state revenues, with projected 2020-21 state tax receipts being down $13.4 billion from a February forecast. Those receipts are not projected to return to the levels seen during the 2019-20 school year for another four years.

As such, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has threatened to cut state aid to districts and municipalities by 20% if a federal stimulus package is not received. Already, the district has seen 20% “holdbacks” in four different aid categories — 4408 aid, deferred building aid, BOCES expense aid and high/excess cost aid.

The worst case scenario, he noted, is a $14 million dollar loss. A 10% cut would be a $7 million dollar loss. Whitaker thinks it will be somewhere in the middle and emphasized to board members a need to act conservatively during the next several months.

“In order to address that, I’m going to set a number,” he said. “I’ve met with our principals and we’ve talked about possible options to close this gap. … We’re going to be moving forward with a hiring freeze, with a spending freeze and the only things that will get approved for expenditures are mission-critical items — those items that are central to our mission which is the education of students.”

Whitaker said the district will be planning for additional reductions next year as well, citing a gap elimination adjustment that indicates the second year of this stretch will be “worse than the first year.”

“In order to create a strong, fiscal position for our district, we have to weather the storm, set a course for sound financial footing for the future — not just for this year,” he said. “Our decisions have to be based on the good, financial health for the school district as well as the good programmatic and instructional health. Those are our two core values. We must be in existence and be in a sound financial position so that we can provide programs and instruction for kids.”

He emphasized that the district’s three-to-five year plan “has to be an accurate three-to-five year plan and it has to be a 10 year vision.”

“We have to focus on students and our future,” Whitaker said. “Our students are our community both now and into the community, both now and into the future. That’s what we need to focus on.”

After Whitaker’s presentation, Paul Abbott, board president, said his “initial thoughts are we have to get down to that, so I can only assume that we’ve already seen the best of times for state aid for the school year and that things are going to get worse.”

“We’ve talked about it as a board that this isn’t going to be a one-year problem, it’s going to be a multi-year problem — I worry that if we don’t become very proactive about this immediately, then we’re going to be chasing savings that we should’ve realized from January to June,” Abbott said, emphasizing that “it’s going to compound itself when we get to July 1.”

He also admitted that the district has to “position ourselves in a manner that assumes things are going to be as bad as an intelligent person would expect them to be going forward.”

“I just am wondering if we should be looking at some of the more ‘nice to haves’ now to save more of the ‘need to haves’ later,” Abbott added.

Board member Shelly Leathers agreed with Abbott.

“We have a fiduciary responsibility and we need to take a conservative approach to it because we can’t put ourselves in the position where we’re even further behind the 8-ball,” said Leathers. “Miraculously if things aren’t as bad as we think, then we have the ability to make those decisions instead of having those decisions made for us.”

Joe Pawelski, board member, agreed with the need to be considerate of the fiscal reality, but warned against making the “mistake that some other school districts made four or five months ago when they made drastic cuts and didn’t need to make those cuts and scared the heck out of everybody.”

“People lost jobs and went elsewhere and they didn’t have people to hire back, et cetera,” he said. “We do have to be mindful of the situation but I think we have to tread lightly also. I don’t want to see us have money show up and we didn’t have to make that cut.”

Whitaker noted that while the district does not know how bad the fiscal impact will be, that there seems to be a consensus that the issues will be “significant.”

“To put it in a metaphor: our compass points to north, south, east and west with no degrees off in between,” he said. “Generally, we know we’re sailing west. But we don’t know if we need to sail more northwest or southwest. We really don’t know, but we do know we’re headed toward significant financial issues.”