District overview
Long Lake Central School District
How a one-school, 60-student district in the Adirondacks is funded, governed, and run
How is Long Lake funded, and what does that mean for its budget?
Long Lake Central School District runs a single PK-12 building - first built in 1925, expanded in 1957 and 1969 - for a public enrollment the district reported as 60 students for 2026-2027. Because so few students share the fixed cost of keeping a full K-12 school open, property taxes on the Town of Long Lake and the Town of Arietta (the district's two geographic pieces) cover most of the $5,243,230 general fund budget for 2026-2027, with state aid making up roughly a tenth. Voters approve the budget and vote for Board of Education seats every May; the current board has 4 of its usual 5 seats filled after a member resigned in July 2026.
Property taxes carry most of the budget
The 2026-2027 tax levy is $3,678,800 against a $5,243,230 total budget - about 70% of general fund revenue, per the district's own budget document.
State aid is a small share
The district's 2026-2027 budget projects $535,000 in state aid, about a tenth of the total budget.
Two towns split the tax bill
About 96% of the taxable value backing the district sits in the Town of Long Lake and about 4% in the Town of Arietta (mostly state land); each town gets its own calculated tax rate from the same total levy.
Governance is a small, elected board
A 5-member Board of Education, elected districtwide each May, sets the budget and policy; one seat was vacant as of the district's most recent published minutes (August 11, 2026) after a member's resignation, with the board voting to appoint a replacement from the community.
A high per-pupil cost is not evidence of mismanagement here - it is the arithmetic of keeping one full PK-12 building open for a very small, remote community, and voters have approved every recent budget by wide margins (95-9 in May 2026).
Where the district stands
Up 0.6% from the $5,212,800 adopted 2025-2026 budget.
Up 2.4% from the $3,591,770 2025-2026 levy.
Up from 53 the year before - about a 13% single-year increase for a district this size.
Up from $5.90 in 2025-2026 and $4.67 in 2018-2019.
Salary $147,826 plus benefits (retirement, health insurance, Social Security, and other items); disclosed in the Budget Document's Administrative Salaries Statement, which New York districts must publish under state law.
Context: $535,000 projected state aid divided by the $5,243,230 total budget, both figures from the Budget Document.
The 15th (August 11, 2026) is posted only as draft minutes, not yet formally approved by the board.
Major projects
Building condition survey with CSArch
Early stage - survey underway, no cost or scope decided yetThe district began working with the architecture firm CSArch in mid-2026 on a required building condition survey of the school building, which was originally constructed in 1925 and expanded in 1957 and 1969. This kind of survey is the diagnostic step New York districts typically complete before deciding whether to pursue a new capital project.
- Board minutes note a first meeting with CSArch is scheduled
- Board minutes report the first building-condition-survey meeting with CSArch took place
Funding
General fund Board of Education budget line, which the district's 2026-2027 budget document says includes funds for the 'required building conditions survey and 5-year plan'
This page is built from the district's own Board of Education agenda/minutes archive (a single page covering 2015 through today) and its Budget/Voting page, collected by an automated weekly scraper first run in August 2026, plus New York State (NYSED) and federal (NCES) public directory data used only to confirm identity, address, and enrollment history. All meetings and the annual budget-vote results from the trailing 12 months (September 2025 through August 2026) were read from the district's own approved minutes. Monthly agenda packets are image-scanned PDFs and were not machine-readable text, so this page relies primarily on the text-readable approved minutes for the same meetings, which record every motion and vote.
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