Clymer Central School’s Board of Education officially approved the budget for next school year at their most recent meeting. P-J photo by Sara Holthouse

CLYMER — Clymer Central School’s Board of Education has officially approved the school budget for the 2024-2025 school year.

Business Official Jarrett Wiggers gave the board an overview of what the budget for next year currently looks like at the most recent board meeting.

“Based on our three part budget our admin expenses are showing a decrease of three percent,” Wiggers said. “Really, what that is from is removing the elementary principal from the budget and then we did reallocate a portion of our high school principal’s salary to special ed to indicate some of the duties she has there.”

Capital expenses are showing a large decrease, but Wiggers said they are relatively flat. The decrease is based on a debt service that came off from last year to this year. Programming saw a seven percent increase.

“Really the primary drivers here are anticipated special ed costs increasing and then the purchase of the two new school buses,” Wiggers said. “So that’s the majority of what that increase shows.”

The school is working on purchasing two new school buses, which Wiggers said is a big expenditure but they are still waiting on delivery. He added that normally the buses would be here by now but the company redid the body designs and ended up delayed. Things have worked out and are beginning to push forward, but the school has kept the buses they are replacing until they have received the new ones, which is the normal procedure.

On the revenue side of the budget, the tax cap is coming in at 3.04, continuing to provide services for current out-of-district students.

“Assuming that our interest earnings and refunds of prior expenses remain pretty steady and then also too, the state aid being flat,” Wiggers said. “Also the designated fund balance, that’s what we plan on carrying forward from this year’s tax levy.”

Additional factors from the last budget workshop include the safety patrol officer, which has had a new budget line established for it, and reducing the contingency in special education. Other big things are the OT position that the school is looking to fill and legal expenses.

“We adjusted that pretty significantly for legal just based on trends,” Wiggers said. “Over the last couple of years we’ve seen a steady increase in legal expenses in the district, so we wanted to make sure we weren’t caught off guard by that next year.”

Superintendent Beth Olson said she felt comfortable with the budget as presented at this time.

“It’s the best case scenario,” Olson said. “If we were to get a doozy or something thrown at us with the final budget that’s approved then we’ll adjust, but we have a backup plan so we’re good.”

The Budget Hearing is set for May 8 at 6 p.m. before the regular board meeting.