Give the school budget your support

Residents should vote in support of the Long Beach School District’s proposed budget next Tuesday. It is a reasonable plan that preserves the district’s current level of programming while also creating new positions that will greatly benefit students.

The $131.9 million budget is 1.48 percent larger than this year’s spending plan, and will help the district rely less on its reserve funds in the future. It adds special-education teachers, a part-time psychologist, three English as a New Language positions, arts program instructors, a fifth-grade teacher, permanent substitutes for the middle and high schools and math and literacy coaches for the elementary schools.

While it’s true that the district will hit the tax cap for the first time ever, this is not unusual for school districts in Nassau County, and is an important step in preserving the district’s long-term fiscal health. It’s commendable that the tax levy has been kept so low in recent years, especially in light of the financial burden that Hurricane Sandy imposed on the community.

In the 2013-14 school year, for example, the tax cap formula allowed the district an increase in the levy of 5.52 percent, but officials assembled a budget that had an increase of just 1.02 percent. That is a clear indicator that the Board of Education and other school officials believe they have a responsibility to help support Long Beach.

But the time has now come for the district to ask for a little more in order to best meet the needs of its students. We believe the proposed 3.19 percent increase in the tax levy is eminently reasonable.

Though it’s unusual that the version of the spending plan adopted by the board was slightly larger than the original draft presented in February, it speaks to the high level of transparency that the district’s chief operating officer, Michael DeVito, worked toward while crafting the budget. He presented a series of detailed versions of the plan throughout the spring, each focusing on different areas such as staff salaries, benefits, and equipment and supplies.

We encourage you to give the budget a “yes” on Tuesday.

Re-elect Trustees Tangney, Mininsky

Show your support next week, too, for Board of Education Trustees Darlene Tangney and Stewart Mininsky. Though both are running unopposed, they deserve public acknowledgement of their hard work in recent years to improve the school district and approve responsible budgets.

That Tangney and Mininsky have no challengers is a tribute to the stellar work they have done on the board. They care deeply about the schools, the students and the community as a whole, and they deserve your vote.