SHERBURNE – Tonight, the Sherburne-Earlville School District will hold its public hearing on its budget for the 2026-2027 school year.

The total proposed budget is $41,447,632, an increase of 3.18% from this year's budget of $40,171,474. The proposed tax levy increase is set at the estimated state cap for the district at 2.68%.

According to Interim Superintendent Antoinette Halliday the primary factor influencing the budget are rising costs of health insurance and insufficient state aid. She said proposed cost reductions in the budget will include teachers, an administrator, building and grounds, and clerical worker staff cuts.

“Our budget shortfall was driven by the rising costs of health insurance and operational services, along with the cost of employee contractual obligations. Although the state budget has not been finalized, initial projections indicated that a modest increase in state aid would not be sufficient to cover the gap,” said Halliday.

Despite that New York State has not finalized its budget yet, schools are required to propose theirs for the upcoming year much sooner and forced to account for state aid with projections. Sherburne-Earlville is projected to receive $32,377,246 of state aid that's accounted for in the 2026-27 budget.

District Director of Finance and Personnel Joanne Palamaro said, “If you look at our state aid run, you're not going to see that number on the run. That's through working with fiscal advisors, it's an estimate because they don't have a budget, unfortunately.”

Eligible voters are asked to authorize the district's budget on May 19.

When it comes to federal aid Palamaro says the district had been declared “held harmless” up until this year, so they expect reduced funding from federal sources to start impacting them now and have taken that into account for the budget proposal.

“As the needs have gone up, the funding has gone down,” said Halliday, echoing a sentiment seen across district's in the area wrestling with rising costs of everything over recent years.

Staffing cuts anticipated

The Sherburne-Earlville school district has been forced to make the difficult decisions to lay off staff members, which may include teachers, an administrator, building and grounds, and clerical worker.

According to Halliday, the district's enrollment has decreased by 10% over the last ten years, and they have not matched the staffing rate to this decline resulting in extremely low class sizes. Notably they report elementary classes this year with as few as 13 students and cohorts ranging from 80 to 95 students.

Initially staffing was reduced through attrition and retirement incentives, but as costs continue to rise difficult decisions had to be made as staffing has a large impact on the budget.

“This year, with the other rising costs, it was clear that we needed to, 'right-size' to make sure that our staffing matches our student population. The administration very carefully went through position by position to determine where we could do that with the least impact to students,” said Halliday

Cuts will include teachers, an administrator, building and grounds, and clerical worker according to Halliday.

“Unfortunately, we had to reduce staffing levels across departments. These decisions have been difficult, as we value the contributions of every team member. We initially reduced staffing through attrition, including retirements, but ultimately needed to make additional cuts. We worked carefully to preserve the strength of our programs despite the necessary reductions,” said Halliday.

Halliday did say that teachers who have been laid off are placed on a preferred eligibility list to be called back if circumstances change.

Aside from staffing cuts, the district has tried other measures to reduce costs. Halliday explained that they looked carefully at every supply item, every equipment item, and there were some cuts in those areas but they try not to make a lot of supply changes because of its minimal impact on the budget and significant impact on the classroom.

A proposition for needed student transportation

In addition to voting on the budget proposal, the ballot includes a proposition for the district's acquisition/replacement of student transportation vehicles that are not buses. These types of vehicles are used to transport smaller groups of students to different programming throughout the area.

Palamaro explained that the costs of these vehicles would not impact the 2026-27 budget but that they're going to be aided over the next five years. Palamaro said they would only need to accommodate about $12,000 a year starting in the 27-28 budget for all of the vehicles in the proposition.

The proposition requests the authorization to purchase and finance nine student transport vehicles at a total estimated cost of $455,000.

According to Halliday and Palamaro these vehicles are needed because the current ones are beyond their useful life, and will require expensive maintenance/repairs to continue to be used. They say it makes more sense fiscally to purchase new ones than to spend extensively on repairs.

When asked what they expect to hear feedback on at the hearing Palamaro and Halliday explained that there isn't typically a huge turnout at meetings but that they expect questions about the impact on students, state aid, improvements and spending decisions. As it comes to the vehicle proposition, Halliday said, “It's also a matter of keeping up our facilities and our equipment up so that it doesn't cost us more in the future when things are irreplaceable.”

If the vehicle proposition does not pass, they'll be forced to try and maintain what they have which they say is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive.

Board seats up for election

At the same vote on May 19, there are three board member seats open and up for election. Qualifications to be a board member are: ability to read and write; 18 years old or older; U.S. Citizen, district resident for at least one continuous year; may not be a family member of a current board member; may not be a current employee of the district; and may not simultaneously hold another incompatible public office.

The Budget Hearing tonight, May 5 will be held at the Sherburne-Earlville Middle School Room 230 at 6 p.m. and will include a budget presentation. Fliers with the budget information have just recently been finalized and should be received by district voters in the mail soon.