With the state in a seemingly perpetual budget crisis, the Guilford schools administration is preparing to kick off the local public budget season for fiscal year 2018-’19 in January, even with no clear word from the state on the current year’s aid numbers.

At the Board of Education (BOE) meeting on Dec. 11, Superintendent of School Paul Freeman informed the board that the administration is deep in the internal budget process, speaking with building leaders, department heads, and determining projected staffing levels.

“We will have a first administrative draft of a budget that we will be delivered to all of you in its complete form by Jan. 4 and we will be making the first public presentation of that administrative draft budget in this room at your regular meeting on Jan. 8,” he said.

After the budget is presented to the board, it will be presented to the public on Monday, Jan. 22 and Tuesday, Jan 23 over the course of two budget public forums at Adams Middle School.

“Both of those happen after I deliver my draft administrative budget but before you as a board take any action, so it is a good opportunity for the community to get involved,” said Freeman.

Some parents at the meeting asked if budget elements like full-time art would be presented in this budget. Freeman said the administration tries to look at the budget as a whole and said the public forums in January would be a good time for community members to come and voice their opinions on those programs.

“Any proposed increases or decreases to things like art, music, technology instruction, any proposed increases or reductions to the extra-curricular programming, those would all be presented for the first time in our administrative draft on Jan. 8,” he said. “Then the community has a chance to say, ‘Great, we are glad that is in there, please keep it’ or ‘Please pull something out’ or ‘Please add in something we didn’t hear about.’”

The BOE operating budget approved at referendum in April 2017 is $58,650,136, an increase of $743,345 or 1.28 percent in spending compared to the previous year. In light of the state’s budget woes, the overall town budget assumed a reduction of roughly $1 million in Education Cost Sharing dollars, the primary program used by the state to help municipalities run their schools. BOE Chair Bill Bloss said assumed revenue shortfall made by the town has worked out this far considering there have already been two cuts to the town’s ECS grant.

“We are half way through the fiscal year and we still have a moving number in terms of what our state aid is going to be, so I think as we go into next year’s budget we should keep this in mind,” he said.

Freeman pointed out that state Comptroller Kevin P. Lembo recently notified the governor that the state is on track for a $207.8 million deficit that exceeds the one percent threshold, meaning the General Assembly is now required to assemble a deficit mitigation plan. Bloss said this means there is a good chance of more cuts this year, but said fortunately the legislature doesn’t seem to have much appetite for continually cutting municipal aid this time around.

“The bottom line is I think our delegation...[—State Representative Vincent Candelora (R-86), State Representative Sean Scanlon (D-98), and State Senator Ted Kennedy Jr. (D-12)—]...worked really hard to make it clear that a budget was not going to pass without the cooperation of districts like ours and that the mood was not positive to pass a budget that had no state aid for towns like ours,” he said. “It ultimately worked out to be a cooperative process and we did fine. Hopefully we can continue that way.”

Freeman said the town made the right decision with the revenue assumption and Bloss said the decision has left the town in a good position going into this coming budget.

“We could have done nothing and in that case we would be explaining how we are going to fill a $400,000 hole in the budget,” he said. “Or would could have acted like the sky was going to fall and then we would have had reduced services and laid off a bunch of teachers and then had to say, ‘Hmm, OK now we have money that could have been used to save those teachers.’”

The budget public forums are Monday and Tuesday, Jan. 22 and 23, at 7:30 p.m. in the chorus room at Adams Middle School.