Levittown OKs $205M budget

The Levittown School District will expand academic programs and add more technology if its $205.4 million budget is approved in May.

The Board of Education unanimously adopted its spending plan on March 30, which carries a .84 percent tax levy increase, which is the district’s tax cap. The overall budget increases by 1.8 percent.

“I think it’s great,” Board of Education President Peggy Marenghi said of the budget. “We’re really being fiscally responsible and at the same time maintaining and expanding our programs.”

The district will continue its one-to-one tablet initiative, which gives a device to each ninth-grader. New technology courses would include a 10-week computer literacy workshop for middle-school students and an elementary keyboarding class.

Several classes would be added at the high-school level including Advanced Placement Capstone — an intensive research course — ethics, American Sign Language and others. Two new programs at the Gerald R. Clapps Career and Technical Center would include landscape design and construction management.

The budget would increase the allocation for extra-curricular activities at each elementary school by $2,000. Superintendent Dr. Tonie McDonald said that this should allow each of the six schools to add three or four more clubs. “That’s going to clubs that kids want,” she said. “That’s a way to learn in a really fun way.”

McDonald said she is also pleased that the budget supports the district’s STEM initiatives, for science, technology, engineering and math. There would be an expanded robotics program and the creation of a STEM lab in an extra classroom at Lee Road Elementary School.

The district will be upgrading its bus fleet next year with the purchase of four large and three small buses. The Levittown Transportation Department gets more than 4,100 students to and from school every day.

Facilities enhancements will include the installation of a steeple chase — a water obstacle — at the MacArthur High School track. The locker rooms and wrestling room at Jonas Salk Middle School would be renovated.

District officials are still considering adding an elementary school foreign language program for next year. If implemented, it would begin in kindergarten with a teacher visiting each class a few times per week, and would be expanded by a grade each subsequent year.

State aid

The adopted budget included the assumption that the district would not longer lose money through the gap elimination adjustment. The GEA was enacted several years ago to help the state close its budget deficit. Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposed budget would have returned some money to Levittown, but still left it short by nearly $2.6 million.

William Pastore, the assistant superintendent for business, said he expected to get all that money back when the state budget was finalized April 1. Pastore said that was based on reliable information from people with knowledge of the state budget process. “All indications are it’s going to be restored,” he said.

He was right. When the governor and Legislature agreed to a budget, the GEA was gone and Levittown got its full state aid, which will total $54.3 million next year.

Trustee Michael Pappas voted for the budget while expressing reservations about relying on a revenue source that wasn’t definite. He expressed concern that if the GEA wasn’t fully restored, Levittown would have to take additional money from its reserves to cover the gap.

The district will use $6.6 million from its savings for next year. With no more GEA, the district won’t have to dip any further into its reserve funds.

The district’s budget hearing will be held on May 4, and the budget vote is on May 17.

“I think it’s a fair budget,” McDonald said, adding that district officials sought input from all members of the Levittown school community. “We take the community’s tax dollars very seriously and we always want to do the best we can with the resources we have.”