As with years past, Evesham residents will soon get a chance to attend special community meetings to give their say on the upcoming 2016–2017 Evesham Township School District budget.
At the Jan. 28 meeting of ETSD Board of Education, Superintendent John Scavelli Jr. presented members of the public with preliminary budget outlines and information on community meetings set for Feb. 29 and March 1.
Scavelli said the upcoming meetings are scheduled for slightly later than in previous years and any budget information presented there will include state aid figures.
However, Scavelli said there was no indication state aid for the 2016–2017 budget would be significantly different than in the past several years.
According to Scavelli, the 2016–2017 budget includes expenditures such as a new telecommunications system, five new school buses and the continuation of school resource officers in the district’s schools.
Scavelli said the telecommunications upgrade was something the district has been consistently putting off throughout past budgets, but the district is at a point where getting replacement parts to repair the older system is becoming too difficult.
“Our system dates back into the 1990s, which in the world of telecommunications is really old,” Scavelli said.
Regarding the buses, Scavelli said school buses have a mandatory 15-year time limit they can remain in service, and the district was at a point where it needs to replace half of its fleet in a four- or five-year period.
“Regardless of what shape the bus is in, once that 15 years is up, that bus can no longer be used to transport students by our district,” Scavelli said.
Although the preliminary budget Scavelli presented totaled above what the district would be able to legally raise through taxation without a separate vote from the public, Scavelli made sure to note the numbers were not final and would be lower as time moved forward.
“We know from past experience when we do these presentations every time we’re whittling away, we’re making adjustments, we get new information, and it helps us make better decisions,” Scavelli said. “It will not be this by March, April and May. It will be something less than that.”
Scavelli also used the meeting to talk about the district’s declining enrollment figures, which have been trending downward since their peak in 2003 of 5,436 students.
This year the district has 4,440 students enrolled, which is also down from 4,551 students enrolled in the 2014–2015 school year.
For the 2016–17 school year, enrollment is projected to drop further to 4,352 students, and by the farthest projected school year of 2020–2021, enrollment is projected to have dropped to 4080 students.
Those figures also include any new students the district might gain from any planned residential projects.
Due to the declining enrollment figures, Scavelli said in addition to presenting 2016–2017 school year budget information at the upcoming community meetings, the district would also present information for the 2017–18 school year examining a potential restructuring at the elementary school level.
“We really need to look ahead as much as we can and provide an outlook and some planning into the future,” Scavelli said.
