Bellmore-Merrick Board of Ed approves 2023-24 budget

The Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District Board of Education approved a proposed $188 million budget for the 2023-24 school year at its April 3 meeting. The budget is $11.7 million, or 6.6 percent, larger than the current spending plan.

The proposal accounts for inflation, rising health insurance premiums and several new and improved programs for students in the district, which encompasses Grand Avenue and Merrick Avenue middle schools and John F. Kennedy, Sanford H. Calhoun and Wellington C. Mepham high schools.

Before the presentation, given by Mikaela Coni, the district’s assistant superintendent for business, Superintendent Mike Harrington thanked the board for its support in making the budget possible.

“This presentation is filled with programs and initiatives that are maintained, that are continuing, that are new,” Harrington said. “There’s no place like Bellmore-Merrick. The things we have in our budget for next year doesn’t happen without the support of the community and the work of the Board of Education.”

The goals of the board and the central administration, Coni said, were to present a spending plan that is fiscally sound and supportive of students’ needs.

“Since Covid, the needs of students really have drastically increased,” she said. “This budget really ensures that we’re continuing to provide for all of our students.”

The plan includes an increase in the tax levy — the total amount in taxes that will be collected from district taxpayers — of 2.37 percent.

Coni said that taxes would comprise 69 percent of the funding for the budget; state and federal aid, 24 percent; the district’s fund balance, 5 percent; and “local sources” — tuition from students who don’t live in the district but attend district schools, rental agreements for facility use, interest income and other miscellaneous revenue — 2 percent.

State aid, Coni said, will be a great help. “I am very happy and fortunate — I think we all are — to say that of that $11.7 million, 8 percent … is funded through state aid,” she said of the year-over-year increase. “This year was the largest state aid package schools have received in history, and without that package, the financial landscape of, really, all districts across the state would look a lot different.”

Inflation, she added, has also been a factor in the budgetary growth. Health insurance premiums for staff will increase 15 percent in 2023, and are estimated to rise another 12 percent in 2024. Other drivers of increasing expenditures include special education programs. More students will need support services, and rates for contracted service providers will increase as well.

Bellmore-Merrick is not renewing its contract with the Guardian Bus Company in 2023-24, and is requesting proposals from other transportation services.

“The reason we’re not renewing our contract is because their rates with Bellmore-Merrick have been under average,” Coni explained. “To bring us up to average, those rates would go up 20 percent.”

The district is focusing on the theme “Pathways-Path-Purpose” to further develop individual academic avenues for each student, according to the portion of the presentation led by Scott Bersin, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. This includes initiatives in STEAM — science, technology, engineering, art and math — as well as enhanced professional development opportunities and vocational education, among other things.

In the middle schools, there will once again be opportunities for students to accelerate in math and science, as there were before the pandemic. And at the high schools, new courses like Advanced Placement Human Geography and Artificial Intelligence will be available.

The district’s specialty programs, like CHAMP, a culinary program at Kennedy, and Bellmore-Merrick Broadcasting, housed at Mepham, will have full enrollment next year. The cosmetology program will accommodate eight additional students, and the electric program will expand by 50 percent, because it is now admitting juniors.

“You name a type of student in this district,,” Bersin said, “and that budget supports it.”

The budget vote for Bellmore-Merrick, and its four elementary school districts, is set for May 16. To listen to Bellmore-Merrick’s budget presentation, a link can be found at Bellmore-Merrick.k12.ny.us.