Voters approve East Meadow school, library budgets

District voters supported the proposed budgets for East Meadow schools and the public library on Tuesday, while the Board of Education saw sweeping changes.
   
The $178 million school budget passed, with 2,429 voters supporting it and 1,611 opposing it.
   
School board challengers Jeffrey Rosenking and Corey Fanelli topped their incumbent opponents, while Joseph Danenza won his race for a vacant seat. Rosenking defeated Abby Rothschild-Kaplan by a vote count of 1,886 to 1,536. He will begin serving a three-year seat in July.
   
Fanelli, a 20-year-old junior at St. John's University, was the youngest person ever elected to the board. He beat Steven Jacobs, 2,002 to 1,353, and was sworn in on Election Night to begin a one-year term. The race between Danenza and Robert Kushner was too close to call as the polling-site returns were announced. Following a count of the absentee ballots, Danenza was pronounced the victor, 1,773 to 1,711.
   
Joseph Parisi and Marcee Rubinstein will return to the school board. They ran unopposed, with Parisi garnering 2,319 votes and Rubinstein tallying 2,090. Parisi, who was appointed last July to replace Diana DeVito, and Rubinstein, who won a special election for a one-year seat, will begin full three-year terms in July.
   
Voters approved the East Meadow Public Library's $6.2 million budget, with 2,416 in favor and 1,516 opposed. Ellen Matishek, who was appointed to the library's Board of Trustees last year, ran unopposed and won a five-year term with 2,119 votes.

The budgets
   
The school budget increases spending by 1.7 percent, and there is an anticipated rise of 1.3 percent in the tax levy, the total amount the district must collect in property taxes to meet expenses. Despite the uncertainties in state aid allotments, and with current-year funds already withheld from the district, the spending plan preserves all academic and co-curricular programs and keeps all jobs intact.