Doing more with less

Last Monday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed a two percent tax cap and said state aid for school districts would be curtailed significantly for the 2011-12 school year, which were two items Oceanside Schools Superintendent Dr. Herb Brown said he feared might happen during the last board of education meeting.

According to projected figures, the Oceanside School District will receive a 12.1 percent cut in state aid next year — a cut of $2,278,220. The drop is marginally higher than the average cut for Long Island school districts, which sits at around

11 percent.

However, Brown was positive about the financial stability of the district. There are reserve funds ready, he said, for the retirement system and worker’s compensation. “We’ll have [these reserve funds] ready when we need it,” he said. “They’ll help mitigate the tax increases.”

In preparation for a potential crisis with the budget plan, Brown added that he and his staff have been proactive. He cited the New York State Insurance Reciprocal, which has helped save the school district millions of dollars in liability insurance over the last 25 years, as a major reason why his district was still financially stable. Brown also added that, at the same time Oceanside joined the insurance reciprocal, it also began to self-insure worker’s compensation policies to help cut down on costs.

“We’ve been very fiscally responsible for 30 years,” the superintendent said.

A testament to the school district’s productivity, Oceanside currently has the third-lowest spending per pupil ratio in Nassau County, behind Seaford and Wantagh. The total spending per pupil is a little more than $21,000. But Brown insisted that, although this was a positive figure, it would make cuts for next year even more difficult.

“What [this number] means is that we have less to cut because we’ve been very fiscally responsible for 30 years,” Brown said. “It also means that our staff is very productive … or we wouldn’t have a spending per pupil ratio so low.”

Oceanside’s budget for 2010-11 is just over $128 million, about $100 million more than that of the Island Park School District’s spending plan. Dr. Rosmarie Bovino, the district’s superintendent, was not available to comment. But she did say at a recent Board of Education meeting that she wanted to get the Island Park School District and the local community involved to work through any financial difficulties they may encounter.

The proposed state aid cut for Island park is $342,000 — a little over 16.3 percent, which is significantly higher than the average for Long Island school districts.

Both the Island Park and Oceanside school boards will continue preparing their spending plans during their next budget workshops, both of which are set to take place on the evening of Feb. 28.