At the Oct. 21 Kingston school board meeting, Port Ewen resident David Rylance raised concerns about the school tax during the public comment portion.

“I got my tax bill a couple weeks ago, and I was shocked when I opened it. And I guess I'm a victim of unintended consequences because the school board, or rather the school tax levy, I believe, was something over 7 percent when it was passed last year, and my tax bill went up by 10.5 percent,” Rylance said. “Paying taxes that increase by 10 percent a year is not sustainable. Period.”

In May, the Kingston City School District’s $249,522,500 budget passed with a tax levy increase of 6.97 percent. During his public comment, Rylance referenced reports about the school’s declining enrollment, which the district discussed at the May 6 budget hearing. Rylance said he did some research and found that between 2020 and 2026, the district dropped from approximately 6,500 to 5,900 students, but the budget increased from $187 million to $258 million.

“I understand the increased costs, primarily driven by transportation — the big bugger, special ed — another big bugaboo, debt service, and health benefits, all increase the budget,” Rylance said. “But to your credit, or to the credit of school boards now and previous, the budget did stay below the New York State sales tax cap limits. But the budgets and the increases associated with it occurred in the face of the declining student population.”

While the board did not directly address Rylance’s concerns, board Trustee Suzanne Jordan did discuss improving communication about the budget between the audit and finance committee, the board and the wider community during her committee report.

Jordan said that Paul Padalino, the superintendent, and Sharifa Carbon, the assistant superintendent for business and operations, are “really working hard to come up with a way of delivering the information that we need, but in smaller bites.” According to Jordan, Padalino and Carbon are putting together a schedule to give presentations on different categories of the budget.

“What I'm going to ask the board to do is we will try to provide whatever we need in terms of background information in the board library prior to our discussion,” Jordan said. “And then I'm going to ask that the board come up with their questions ahead of time as much as possible, so that they can be prepared to include that in the presentation.”

Marc Rider, the president of the school board, said that while he felt like this was “somewhat” a reasonable tactic. “In previous years, and we haven't changed charters or anything, we've said that the budget doesn't really flow through the audit and finance committee,” Rider said.

“Sometimes there's this perception that the Audit and Finance Committee really works through the budget, which it does not, and it's the entire board,” Rider said. “We've even had board members in the past confused on their role of being very active in board preparation, even if they're not on the Audit and Finance Committee.”

Carbon said part of the communications challenges that the audit and finance committee is trying to address is “the whole picture.” She said that there are many parts of the budget that the community is unaware of, and that one budget workshop that “covers everything under the sun” is not sufficient.

“I think the intention is really to increase the communication and the understanding of the overall budget when we get to May instead of waiting until May,” Carbon said. “We all have that fiduciary responsibility to understand it. So last year there was a concern that people seemed surprised. We don't want anybody surprised.”

The next school board meeting will be held on Nov. 4, and a “state of the district” presentation is planned for Nov. 18.