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Light Rain School budget changed to accept Assembly grant
Revenue increased by $25,000 from state
The Oceanside School District recently received a $25,000 grant and voted at its October meeting to add the money to the district’s coffers by increasing the budget.
Because of the way the grant, which is a Special Assembly Grant from Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg, was written, it had to be added to the district’s budget by increasing the General Fund through a special vote. The General Fund is the budget that was approved by voters in April. However, the increase will have no affect on taxpayers.
“We need to increase our budget, meaning our appropriation, by $25,000,” said Louis Frontario, the assistant superintendent of business. “But we’re getting $25,000 down the revenue side. It’s budget-neutral, and it’s strictly a procedural thing.”
The $25,000 is being used by the district for two main things: Liberty Partnership and the district’s Center for Cultural Diversity.
Liberty Partnership is an after-school tutoring program run jointly by the district and Nassau Community College. However, according to Superintendent of Schools Dr. Herb Brown, the college, which usually funds the program, could not secure the money for it this year. Therefor, the district will be using part of the grant money to fund the program.
The rest of the money, according to Brown, will be going to programs run through the Center for Cultural Diversity. “We have a reading program where kids from the high school read to kids in the kindergarten center,” said Brown, “we have an after-school homework program for elementary kids, things of that nature.”
According to Frontario, mid-year budget increases like this are common but unpredictable. However, it does not render a community-wide budget vote moot: the Board of Education can only vote to increase the budget if it has the money to fund the increase. For example, a grant.
“We wouldn’t be able to increase it for willy-nilly reasons, like we decide to add $100,000 to our budget,” said Frontario. “We didn’t get voter approval for that. We could have increased the budget $100,000 if we got a $100,000 special assembly grant that said you had to run it through the General Fund.”
