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Peekskill Schools Plan Thursday Meeting to Discuss Job Cuts

PEEKSKILL, N.Y. – Facing a looming April 17 deadline to adopt a proposed budget for the 2012-13 school year, the Peekskill Board of Education will hold a second meeting this week on Thursday night.

The district is still deciding what faculty and staff cuts to make in order to close a $734,260 gap in next year's budget.

According to a Tuesday night presentation by New York school finance and planning expert Charlie Winters and Assistant Superintendent for Business Greg Sullivan, the district estimates it would need to eliminate roughly 23 positions for next year and about 10 positions in the following two years in order to maintain its financial footing.

That is in addition to using $3.2 million of fund balance for the 2012-13 school year that would not be available after next year.

School board trustees scheduled another meeting Thursday since they said they needed more information in order to approve a budget next Tuesday, most notably what positions the district would be eliminating.

"We need to have a clear picture of what the reductions would look like," said school board President Joe Urbanowicz. "We know we can't have 50 kids in a classroom."

Superintendent James Willis said that while it was easy to tell at the elementary level since all students take the same courses, the secondary level was harder to predict years in advance.

"You don't know what your student population is going to be doing, whether it's going to be global studies or American history," Willis said. "It's difficult to predict past next year."

The time of Thursday's meeting had not been finalized as of Tuesday night.

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