By ALEX COSTELLO
The proposed budget for the 2009-10 school year, which is nearly 2 percent higher than last year's $122.1 million budget, is one of the district's smallest increases in years. However, it could push the property tax levy up by nearly 4 percent and increase property taxes for Oceanside homeowners. The administration's proposed budget includes 3.5 percent pay increases for most of the district's staff, which is tempered by decreases to budget items, including science and math supplies.
In order to purchase classroom supplies, schools are given money based on enrollment. The 2009-10 budget proposes to cut classroom supply funding by 15 percent at each of the district's 10 schools. This affects the purchase of things like science kits, which are included in the science budget that dropped $37,225 to $57,850, and math supplies, which decreased $10,547 from last year's budget.
Superintendent Dr. Herb Brown, along with the Assistant Superintendent of Business Louis Frontario, said at the meeting that cuts to the funding of these supplies will not directly impact classrooms, which will still have teaching materials and can wait to upgrade to newer supplies.
Another large cut in the budget was for office furniture and equipment which was down almost $21,000 from last year's budget. School services, like library materials, nurses, and guidance offices stayed roughly the same, with the exception of pay increases for staff. The biggest decrease to these services was in funds for new library books, which dropped $13,643 to $28,635. Schools will be purchasing fewer new books in the year, not taking any off of the shelves.
The largest increase to the budget was for teachers' salaries, which went up $2.3 million to $49.1 million. In total, salaries for teachers, staff and administrators amount to $67.6 million with retirement, health and other benefits adding another $22.5 million, for a total of $90 million or 72 percent of the $124.4 million 2009-10 budget. While any increase in the budget would be likely to lead to an increase in property taxes, not every resident is opposed to paying higher property taxes for the school district.
"I think that it’s one of the lowest increases over the last 20 years," said Debbie Cohen, president of the Oceanside PTA Council, who supports the administration's proposed budget. "They haven’t had to cut any programs, which would impact the quality of our children's education. So I’m happy with the job that they’re doing in creating this budget.
"Most of the people on our Board [of Education] and the superintendent all live in Oceanside, and any increase in taxes will affect them also," she later added. "So it’s not like they’re raising taxes in a district where it isn’t going to impact them."
But there are also residents who feel that salary increases are uncalled for because of the current economic downturn. "Instead of finding a way to lower the cost to the residents of Oceanside, some of whom probably have lost their jobs and have real problems, they just seem to be forging ahead," said Harvey Aronson, 80, an Oceanside resident who, at the meeting, was very vocal in expressing his problem with the proposed pay increases. "And just going ahead, maybe not full-steam ahead, but they want to make sure their teachers get their salary increases."
Aronson said that, instead of giving pay increases to staff, the district should freeze salaries or, ideally, lower them. "I know myself, on my pension and my social security, that I could handle a five percent salary decrease and still be OK," Aronson said. "And I think a lot of people could."
The community will voice its opinion of the budget on May 19, when it goes to vote. If the proposed budget is voted down, the school district has another opportunity to put it up for vote and get it passed. The Board of Education can either put up the same budget for vote again, or make changes to it and put the modified budget up for vote. But if the budget gets voted down a second time, the district goes to what is called an austerity budget.
With an austerity budget, the district does not set the amount of the budget, instead it is calculated based on the Consumer Price Index and tempers the budget from rising more than 4 percent. An austerity budget would be smaller than the district's proposed budget, but it would still be likely to increase from 2008-09. Last year's approved budget was about $122 million, based on that figure the calculated austerity budget would have been about $121.1 million or $942,000 less. The community does not get to vote on an austerity budget. Because the district is proposing a 1.89 percent budget increase this year, the difference between the proposed and austerity budget might not be very great.
"When you have a budget that’s going up three or four percent, the cut is going to be more dramatic," Frontario said. "Whereas in this case, without me really knowing, it might not be as big of a change.
"Who knows?" he added. "We might already be in compliance."
When a budget is voted down and goes to austerity, the Board of Education decides what to trim.
"It’s always better to have a passed budget," Frontario said. "I just think it speaks well for the community’s support of education, for the confidence they have in the district."
In Brown's 23 years with the Oceanside School District, he has never seen a budget go to austerity. There have been a few times when it did not pass on the first vote, but on those occasions, it passed on the second try.
And while Oceanside has a history of passing school budgets, Brown realizes that, especially with the current economic climate, anything is possible. He said that people do not get to vote for the national, state, county or even town budgets -- just the school. And that, he said, could make some people frustrated.
"And if they’re frustrated, sometimes even a one percent increase, they can take out their frustrations and say, 'We don’t want to pay anything,'” Brown said. "So I would never take anything for granted, I would only try to produce a budget that’s as lean as possible."
Comments about this story? ACostello@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 207.
