Levittown trustees: 'Give us our money'

The Levittown Board of Education is calling on state lawmakers to adequately fund public schools, particularly those on Long Island. Trustees made a statement by passing a resolution at the March 2 meeting outlining the steps they believe the state should take.

The resolution was crafted by Levittown board members and administrators, and includes items supported by the New York State School Boards Association. To drive home the importance of the message, Board of Education President Peggy Marenghi read aloud the 17-paragraph motion instead of just calling the resolution number for a vote.

“Hopefully other school districts will follow our lead,” Trustee Michael Pappas said, adding that the purpose was to encourage state lawmakers to “give us our damn money.”

The resolution included several points. It called on the state to get rid of the Gap Elimination Adjustment, which was established in 2010 to help New York State close its budget deficit. School districts are continuing to lose state aid they are otherwise entitled to because of the GEA.

“The governor himself knows the budget is balanced this year,” Pappas said in questioning why the GEA still exists. If it were eliminated, Levittown, one of Nassau County’s largest districts, serving portions of Wantagh and Seaford, would get back about $1.75 million in aid next year.

According to the district, Levittown has lost nearly $28 million over the past five years due to the GEA, and local taxpayers have had to make up that shortfall.

The resolution called for changes to the Foundation Aid formula to assure a fair share of funding for Long Island schools. Marenghi said it has been an often-repeated mantra for years that the region has 17 percent of the state’s students, yet each year only gets an average of 12 percent of total school-aid dollars.

The board is asking lawmakers to ensure that public funds are used to support public education, not private, parochial and charter schools. Trustees are calling for mandate relief, which they say was promised when the tax cap was enacted but was never delivered. More mandates are coming down the road, Superintendent Dr. Tonie McDonald explained, saying that elementary school guidance counselors will be mandated in a few years.

“The unfunded mandates cost districts so much money every year,” Marenghi said.

With the tax cap limiting property tax collections, the board called for more state funding to cover rising costs, as well as changes in the tax-cap law that would eliminate the supermajority requirement, which they say runs counter to the democratic principle of “one person, one vote.”

The board outlined in detail all of these desires in a letter to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, signed by all six trustees, which also addressed student testing, teacher evaluations and the LIPA Reform Act, which further shift the property tax burden to homeowners.