Glen Cove schools present its budget for next year

Glen Cove City School District is proposing a roughly $102 million budget for the 2022-2023 school year, which they presented at the Jan. 19 meeting of the Board of Education, an increase from last year’s budget, which was $96 million. There will be an estimated 20 percent increase from the previous year’s state foundation aid.
“Foundation aid is something we have been working with the state on for a number of years. 
Glen Cove is perceived and categorized as high wealth high poverty,” Dr. Maria Rianna, superintendent of Glen Cove City School District, said. “As a result, we were only getting 44 percent of what we should have received in our foundation aid figures each year.”
“That is a two-year increase in state aid,” Victoria Galante, superintendent of business said. “We were getting about three and a half million per year and with the promise of one more year, approximately the same amount. That will bring the district to 100 percent in its Foundation Aid.” 
Rianna and superintendents across New York have been pushing to have the formula reevaluated so it could reflect the full total of state Foundation Aid each district would need by the 2023-2024 school year.

“We don’t believe that 100 percent is based on a correct base number,” Rianna said. “The formula that is used to distribute this money is still not meeting the needs or correct profile of a school district. We are looking to ensure that that formula is changed.”
The district is estimating it will receive roughly $22 million in state aid, approximately an $8 million increase, for the upcoming school year.
Introduced in the budget was a nine-period day at Finley Middle School at an expense of $550,000. This would cover the cost of necessary staffing and supplies to pay for the renewed expenditure. “They used to have it up until 2011 or 2012 and they cut it because of funding and now we’d like to enhance the instructional program to give students more education,” Rianna said. “We can’t necessarily do that all in an eight-period day. We first offered a nine-period day at the high school, and we now are working towards a nine-period day at the middle school.”
There would be an increase in special education funding of roughly $3 million in the next year because of the rise in student registration. “This year … we don’t have enough money in our special ed. lines to cover that,” Galante said, “so we will have to be addressing that as the months go on.”
The cost of health insurance would be roughly $1 million for the new year, an increase of three percent from last year. Inflation, the cost of supplies, transportation and similar services might require more funds in the budget.
The Consumer Price Index, which measures the costs of goods and services over a period, has been raised to two percent for the 2022-2023 school year. “A lot of our budget lines, you haven’t seen them increased like for supplies and things like that in quite a few years,” Galante said. “I think it’s coming to the time where we have to look at those lines a little bit and add some more money.”
Along with the budget plan, the district presented their new website with the help of Daniel Cava, coordinator of instructional technology, and Gayle Tullo, the student management systems administrator. Now parents, students and members of the district can have access to a translated version of the website.
During the meeting, Rianna announced that the district will continue to wear masks.
The appropriation budget will be presented at the next board meeting on Feb. 2 at 7:30 p.m.