NIAGARA-WHEATFIELD: Technology budget to take a big hit

Local News

March 17, 2010

Director says cuts won’t affect home laptop plan

By Paul Westmoore Niagara Gazette The Niagara Gazette Wed Mar 17, 2010, 11:05 PM EDT

NIAGARA FALLS — Niagara-Wheatfield officials came one step closer to arriving at a proposed 2010-11 district budget Wednesday as Technology Director Mary Ann Buch proposed lopping $475,940 from her department budget next year in an effort to help the district deal with a tight fiscal situation.

Her department was the last one to suggest budget cuts after all district schools and departments presented spending proposals to the school board over the past three months with the idea of helping the district compensate for the $3 million cut in state aid Gov. David A. Paterson included in his proposed state budget.

Business Administrator Kerin Dumphrey said he will take all the information he’s been given by administrators this year and work with Superintendent Carl H. Militello to come up with a proposed 2010-11 budget package for the board to consider presenting to the public at the May 18 budget vote. Dumphrey said he hoped to have a budget ready for board consideration at its April 7 meeting.

Buch said it was not to much of a challenge for her to knock 19 percent off her technology budget because the board spent $372,314 last summer installing a wireless network in district schools, leaving her free to cut that from her budget because the planned project was already paid for.

“We are immediately reducing that amount because we don’t have to pay for it again since it was a one-time investment,” Buch said. “I also cut another $103,626 from the equipment budget simply because we need some relief in the district budget next year. I can do that and still pay for our One-to-One Computing Program next year which will provide 10-inch laptop computers to all 275 district fifth-graders next year.”

The program will eventually supply all student from fifth through 12th grades with individual laptops so they can use all the education programs the district has purchased for them both at school and at home, she said.

She said she also will still have the $39,479 needed to offer the new “Project Lead the Way” course which will provide ninth-graders with the first of a sequence of four pre-engineering courses so interested students can take a course in that field of study each year of high school, the degree of difficulty increasing each year of the program. She said the district has the same type of sequence for students interested in art and business. A new pre-engineering course will be added to the high school curriculum in each of the subsequent three years as next year’s ninth-graders progress through that curriculum.

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