By ANDY GARDNER

MASSENA -- Although the state has not settled on school aid for next year, the Assembly’s budget proposal has Massena Central officials optimistic that they could get adequate aid as they prepare their 2018-19 budget.

At Thursday’s Board of Education meeting, Superintendent Pat Brady said he was encouraged by the Assembly’s proposal to put $1.5 billion into education aid, 5.9 percent more than last year. Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed $769 million, a 3 percent increase, Brady said.

“Normally what we see in the trends in the budget is the Assembly does tend to be higher … the Senate comes in somewhere in the middle and we get somewhere closer to the Senate proposal,” he told the board. “This is good news. We appreciate the legislators are out there pushing for more aid for us.”

However, he said they aren't  slated to get as much Foundation Aid as they could be getting, which isn’t doled out on formula like other types of aid.

“That’s our discrentionary fund, that’s our main operating aid,” Brady said. “Massena receives about $8 million less on Foundation Aid than if it ran on formula … If they can get that by the Senate and the governor, that is good news for Massena.”

There are about $267,000 in various budget requests that aren’t included in the current draft of the budget, Brady said.

“The only thing that we’ve put … in this draft budget so far is a special ed teacher at junior high … to stay in compliance with the law,” the superintendent said. “We have about 12 more students coming in from sixth grade into seventh.”

There are some cost increases in the budget beyond local control.

“Our biggest costs that are going up are the helath insurance, $790,000, and retirement for teachers is going up $218,000,” Brady said. “Those are largely benefits we don’t control.”

Salaries are projected to go up by $438,895.

Brady said the proposals not yet budget, but requested include more bus hours for high school college and career visits and more supplies in the elementary schools. They also want SUNY Potsdam literacy interns to help out with at-risk students up to third grade. The interns are from the school’s education program and are paid $5,000 per year.

“They’d support our most at-risk students to support their reading skills,” Brady said. “It also gives us a pool to look at the elementary candidates that are out there.”

He said students not reading at their grade level by third grade can struggle throughout school.

“The research is clear if they’re not reading on grade level by the end of grade three, they’re going to struggle all the way through,” he said.

They also would like to hire an information technology (IT) specialist as they move toward what the superintendent described as “one-to-one technology for our students.”

That means each student would have their own laptop for lessons and schoolwork, since many teachers are moving toward using Google Classroom.

“Next year at junior high they’re going to pilot that model and we paid for that through the Smart Schools Bond Act,” Brady said.

People can go to http://bit.ly/2pfOaFA to download a Powerpoint presentation with more information on the budget.