District previews spending plan

As it stands now, Rockville Centre school district administrators say a proposed 2010-11 spending plan could include an increase of 3.89 percent over the voter-approved 2009-10 budget of just over $90 million.

Administrators stressed that the proposed preliminary spending plan of just over $93.5 million does not yet reflect any revenue to the schools, including taxes, interest income, PILOT and miscellaneous sources of income, as well as possible state aid — because that is simply not known at this time. It also does not include cuts to any educational or extra curricular programs in the district.

“We would ask the Board of Education to approve, and voters to consider a budget that keeps programs in place,” said school Superintendent Dr. William Johnson.

In addition to administrative cuts that removed $775,000 from the budget before the series of budget workshops began last month and cuts totaling $601,000 that were made during budget workshops, the proposed spending plan has been reduced by another $800,000 through what is being described as “low risk” budget adjustments. These include increasing use of Employee Retirement System reserves, reducing allocations to the Teacher Retirement System and negotiating contracts to reduce the district’s contributions to health insurance plans. Additional “fine tuning” could reduce the budget by another $40,000 and $500,000 could be deducted from a reserve fund the district keeps to return money each year to taxpayers.

But staffing adjustments described as necessary to accommodate changing student enrollment could add $345,000 to the spending plan. Administrators predict they will need several more Special Education teachers at the high school, an ESL teacher that would be shared by middle school and elementary school students, a full time educator to accommodate a large spike in band and string enrollment among students in Rockville Centre’s elementary schools and a half time educator to expand foreign language instruction to the fourth grade — a promise made by the board when the FLES program was started three years ago.

The next Board of Education meeting is scheduled for March 24 and a public work session is scheduled for April 8. A preliminary budget hearing is set for April 20 after which no changes can be made to the proposed budget. The budget hearing during which the board adopts a spending plan is scheduled for May 4. Voters will have the opportunity to go to the polls on May 18 to weigh in on the budget and vote to fill two seats on the Board of Education.

Comments about this story? RVCeditor@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 208.