Bedford Central: A first look at schools’ new budget

By JEFF MORRIS 

A first look at the 2026-27 district budget was presented to the Bedford Central Board of Education at its Jan. 28 meeting, the beginning of a months-long process. 

It was presented by Jose Formoso, the assistant superintendent for business and operations. It was his first budget discussion led by Formoso, who joined the district in July after serving with the Mount Vernon City School District.

In presenting General Fund operating results since 2021, he said there was an average operating surplus of $354,180 over the last five fiscal years, and a cumulative operating surplus for the district over this timeframe was approximately $1.7 million. 

Formoso acknowledged there was a decrease in expenditures in 2021 due in large part to COVID-19 and other grant funding that was received. He said if you look just at the last three years, “the story would look very different, it would show that we are operating at a cumulative deficit.” There is a trend of expenditures exceeding revenue, he said, which “is a structural issue which we will be looking to address during this budget season and the coming years; at the end of the day we need to be able to keep our expenditures in line with our revenue.”

The total fund balance at the end of last year was $22,428,991, of which $11,884,138 was restricted reserves, meaning it could only be used for specific funds, such as retirement, health insurance and tax certiorari. Assigned fund balance of $404,018 is typically used to ease the budget on taxpayers, bridging any gap in the budget; unassigned fund balance of $6,111,528 can be used to cover one-time expenses. Formoso noted that it should not be used to cover recurring expenses, or the fund balance could be depleted.

Source: Bedford Central School District

As had been noted at an earlier meeting, switching the district from a self-insured health plan to NYSHIP should reduce expenditures by over $3 million. However, he also pointed out that with costs for both NYSHIP and Medicare Advantage Plan, the projected hospital/medical insurance budget of $26,320,000 is an increase of $2,689,625, or 11.38%, over the 2025-26 budget of $23,630,375. “Once we get into NYSHIP, our next increases we expect to not be at the same levels,” Formoso said. “At that point we’ve already set the budget under NYSHIP, and their increases have typically over these last few years remained in the single digit numbers.” 

The district will go from a $160.9 million budget to a preliminary budget of $167.5 million. Key drivers affecting the budget going into next year, said Formoso, are increases in the instructional line and the employee benefits line, which are going up by $3.9 million and $2.7 million respectively. He said that makes sense, because a school district budget is typically 75% to 80% driven by salaries and benefits, and BCSD’s sits at right around 76%.

Formoso showed the property tax cap calculations leading to an allowable tax levy percentage increase for 2026-27 of 2.6%. With a preliminary budget of $167,508,295, a tax levy at the 2.6% cap of $149,468,630, and state aid and other revenues expected to total $14,190,802, he is projecting a budget gap of $3,848,863.

Formoso emphasized that this is a preliminary budget.

“We expect a lot of changes coming in over these next two months,” he said. They plan to close the budget gap in multiple ways, he said: expenditure optimization; savings through strategic attrition; management of reserves; and the final step, operational efficiency and long-term fiscal planning. “We’ve already started that process, we’ve looked internally at ways that we could increase operational efficiency over the years,” he said. They’ve also been working with their fiscal advisor on a long-term fiscal plan which they expect to roll out in June. “A long-term fiscal plan will really help us drive to one number,” said Formoso. “We know our revenue stays pretty steady, so we could project out our revenue with fairly good certainty of where we’re going to be in the next five years, and then it’s how do we live within that revenue, how do we keep our expenditures to that level or slightly below.” He said there will be a big presentation that is planned for June.

Formoso was optimistic that they will have worked out how to reduce the budget gap “significantly” by the end of February. Upcoming work sessions are Operations & Maintenance, and Technology, on Feb. 26; Curriculum & Instruction, and Special Education & Pupil Personnel Services on March 11; and the superintendent’s budget presentation and deliberation on March 25. More budget deliberations are scheduled for April 8, with the board adopting the budget on April 22, and a public hearing on May 6. 

The budget vote and school board election will be on May 19.