The Cato-Meridian Central School District is canvassing its operations to find money to plug a 2009-10 budget shortfall without having to drastically reduce personnel or increase taxes.

“We know that next year is not a good year financially, and probably the year later,” Superintendent Deborah Bobo said, “so we tried to streamline as much as we can because our objective is always to offer a program that is effective for students and they are entitled to have, but in a cost effective way. It's scrutinizing everything we have.”

Currently, the district is poised to lose about $401,000 in state education aid next academic year as Gov. David Paterson deals with a shortfall in the millions.

The district began studying its operations last summer knowing it would be faced with a difficult budget year, Bobo said. Since that time, leadership identified numerous ways to save money with only minimal staff reductions.

“We tried to look at how we could streamline as carefully as possible so we can prevent having staff reductions,” she said.

At the moment, Cato-Meridian will not be able to continue with its school resource officer, who is a trained officer from the Cayuga County Sheriff's Office who provides law enforcement, disciplinary and student counseling services for the school community. It is also looking to reduce a full-time teaching position to part-time.

The district is eyeing costs associated with summer curriculum work, supplies, out-of-district special education, the middle school administrative intern position to see if there is a way to conserve funds.

Staff conferences will be kept to a minimum, there will be reductions across the board in equipment and field trips, Bobo said, and electives that do not have large enrollment will not be offered.

“We're just looking very closely at how we maximize our resources to make sure we offer as much for our students in a cost-effective way,” she said. “If we find that enrollment is reduced in these classes, we're not going to offer them.”

Even if revenue projections change with money coming from the federal stimulus plan for the next two years, Bobo is cautious in using those funds.

“If you don't start planning ahead and reducing your budget, in two years you'll find that we're in a more critical position than we are now,” she said. “If you look at the overall picture and you plan for the next two to three years, you need to plan for that reduction because that money will ultimately be terminated. It will come to an end.

“I think that many of the politicians are acting like you don't have to let anyone go and do anything differently because you have money,” she added, “but I don't think that is effective planning.”

Bobo intends to bring more concrete recommendations to the board of education during next Monday's meeting, slated for 6:30 p.m. March 23 at the district conference room in the middle school, Route 370, Meridian.

She is hopeful that the board will adopt a budget during its April 6 meeting with a statewide vote scheduled for May 19.