Budget talks start, but no cuts made

The Rockville Centre Board of Education continued its budget talks last week, but made no moves to close the nearly $1 million funding gap its facing.

The board, meeting on March 9, began talks about some of the parts of the proposed 2016-17 budget: curriculum, instruction and special education. Though the two together total nearly $10 million in spending, they are just a fraction of the proposed $110.2 million budget.

Because of a very tight tax cap this year, the district’s budget increases exceed its allowable tax levy increase by nearly $1 million, meaning the Board of Education has to make cuts (or find new revenue) to make up the difference.

To help mitigate the cuts, Superintendent Dr. William Johnson said the district is offering retirement incentives to long-time staff members. Additionally, the district is hoping for an increase in state aid. Johnson predicted that these two measures could save the district about $500,000. He hoped to have numbers by the next meeting on March 22.

Though the board discussed how some of the money was being spent, it shied away from proposing any spending cuts. When Trustee John O’Shea broached the subject of making cuts, he was chided by other members of the board.

“It’s a little early to start cutting line items,” said President Liz Dion. She was backed up by Trustee Mark Masin.

“I view what we’re doing as fact-finding,” he said. “I want to find the best utilization of our dollars.”

Part of the discussion hinged on how much printing was going on in the district. Even though every student in grades six and up uses an iPad every day (and many elementary school students use them as well), there was no noticeable decrease in the number of copies being made by the district.

The district averages about 18 million pages printed per year, and that number didn’t seem to be decreasing, much to the chagrin of the board.

Also part of the budget is $106,000 for new iPads for the fifth and ninth grade. The students would use those iPads for four years before they are replaced.

It’s part of the district’s technology program: the iPads will be used for four years before being replaced. The old hardware will be filtered down to the elementary schools.

But it brought up a point to the board: eventually, the district will have a surplus of iPads and nothing to do with them.

The Board of Education will continue its budget discussion on Tuesday, March 22 at 7:30 p.m. in the South Side High School cafeteria. On the agenda is a discussion of business administration spending, facilities spending, salaries and staffing.