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Shallow Fog Academic performance, infrastructure highlighted at school budget meeting
The Rockville Centre Board of Education held a preliminary budget hearing on April 12, and announced some changes to capital programs in the proposed spending plan.
There is $1.8 million in the district’s capital line to fund projects like an auditorium projector and speakers at Covert and Watson elementary schools, a $200,000 playground replacement at Wilson Elementary and $42,500 for power washing at Riverside Elementary.
“Our state aid was a big part of funding this budget for next year,” Interim Superintendent Robert Bartels said. “That’s a 24 percent increase in state aid” — a total of around $3 million for the year.
Village resident Mark Mason asked Bartels about the increase in funding for foreign languages, from $50,000 for the entire district a few years ago to $60,000 to $70,000 for each elementary school. Among the course additions are Italian at the high school level and American Sign Language districtwide. Bartels said that there would be one foreign language teacher per school.
Bartels said that the district had removed two large capital projects from the spending plan last month, a $407,000 parking lot replacement at Hewitt Elementary and the repainting of the South Side Middle School track. Hewitt will host summer school programming, which necessitated scrapping the parking lot construction. Bartels said he hoped those programs would be moved to the middle school next year to allow for the construction.
“With the 24 percent increase in state aid and the 2.1 tax levy cap increase, was there any consideration given to not going up to that 2.1 percent?” Mason asked.
Bartels said there was, but that implementing programs like integrated co-teaching was necessary for next year.
The formal budget hearing is on May 4. No changes can be made to the spending plan at that point, and the hearing that night will serve as more of an announcement of the budget that district residents will vote on on May 17.
“This budget not only maintains all of our existing programs,” board Trustee Erica Messier said, “but provides for additional enhancements for students at all levels.”
Messier recently gathered some troubling academic data for the district. The Accelerated for All program, adopted by the district 20 years ago, seems not to be yielding the results administrators hoped for since New York adopted the Common Core State Standards in 2010.
Messier said she discovered that the district’s passing rates in Algebra 1, geometry, and Algebra 2 ranks 21st out of 45 districts in Nassau County that participated in the testing with a passing rate of 90 percent.
Only 69 percent of the district’s “economically disadvantaged” students, whom the Accelerated for All program was instituted to assist, passed the Algebra 1 Regents since the 2018-19 school year, a percentage that ranked 35th out of 45 Nassau school districts. In the Algebra 2 Regents, the district’s passing rates rank 29th for non-economically challenged students and 44th for those who are economically challenged.
“These numbers are very concerning for me,” Messier said. “We cannot continue implementing an antiquated framework and hope for better results.”
Bartels once again reminded attendees that if voters do not approve the budget, a contingency spending plan would be $2.1 million smaller. Most of the cuts would come from capital projects — around $1.5 million, Bartels estimated — but they would also likely include the planned addition of a girls’ varsity golf team and a boys’ varsity volleyball team, as well as more assistant coaches for existing teams.
If the proposed budget is approved, the average district homeowner would see a tax increase of $278 for a total of $13,500.
