East Rockaway schools await state aid numbers

The East Rockaway school district stands to lose more than $500,000 in state aid for the 2010-11 school year if Gov. David Paterson’s proposed statewide cuts to close a burgeoning state deficit become a reality.

District Superintendent Dr. Roseanne Melucci said that the tax levy increase for the 2010-11 budget has not been determined, but the increase in the overall budget should be about 2.5 percent. The increase from the 2008-09 spending plan to 2009-10 was 2.28 percent.

Melucci explained that she could not determine the tax levy because it will depend on how much state aid the district receives. She prepared a preliminary, or rollover, budget for the board in January that maintained all of the district’s staff and programs, she said. She added that there are certain staff contractual increases, in addition to increasing utility costs, that factored into her preliminary budget.

“If we want to keep all our programs, we have to ask, what will it cost?” Melucci said. “We have to take into account not only staff contractual increases but increases in fuel, water, electricity, auditors ... anyone we do business with.”

She noted that the district would take part in a state-mandated building condition survey next year, which she said would cost $15,000. To cut costs in the current budget, Melucci asked district officials to trim spending by 25 percent, and will ask them to keep to that limit again next year. “I told each administrator to start from zero and build a budget of what they need,” she said, “... but they couldn’t go above last year’s budget.”

If the district were to lose out on $500,000 in state aid, Melucci said, it would have no choice but to cut costs. “It depends on how big the number is,” she said of the potential state aid reduction. “If we’re talking big dollars, then we’re talking staff.”