Bellmore budget increase lowest in decades

Bellmore School District officials said they have crafted a draft budget for 2014-15 that calls for one of the lowest spending increases in decades.

Administrators in the district, which includes the Reinhard Center for Early Childhood Education and Winthrop Avenue and Shore Road elementary schools, have drafted a $33.2 million spending plan. The draft, which was revealed to the public in workshops throughout March, calls for a roughly 1 percent spending increase over the current year’s budget.

“These numbers represent the lowest increases in more than 28 years,” said Dr. Joseph Famularo, the district superintendent. “That’s the furthest back we have records of –– we’re still going back and checking.”

Assistant Superintendent for Business and Technology Services Deirdre Gambino explained that the budget draft does not incorporate any instructional spending cuts. In fact, there is a 2.48 percent increase in the instructional component of the plan. Gambino projects that the capital budget will decrease by nearly 10 percent, largely because the district recently finished making payments on a 1999 bond.

Gambino also said she is expecting an increase in state aid of more than $4,000. At the final budget work session on March 14, she explained that the state aid figures listed in the draft did not account for additional increases that local state legislators may request in the coming weeks.

“We utilized the existing governor’s budget,” she said. “We haven’t gotten any hard numbers as to what’s happening in the Assembly and the Senate.”

Bellmore officials will dip into savings funds, while trying not to burden local taxpayers, to balance the 2014-15 budget.