By JOSEPH KELLARD
The board budgeted to expand some of its existing programs and included new ones, while reducing the tax levy increase by nearly 1 percent, from 4.8 percent in the current budget to 3.9 percent.
³I think we¹ve been very, very successful here in Oceanside with keeping our tax rates at 5 percent or lower and still maintaining high excellence in educational programs,² said Robert Transom, a board trustee.
³I think we¹ve achieved a very fine balance between what our budget delivers and the ability of our taxpayers to be able to support it,² said trustee Maryanne Lehrer.
This budget season, Oceanside schools received about a 15 percent increase in state aid after lobbying efforts from Long Island¹s state senators and Assembly members, which the district used to help lower the increase in the tax levy, the total amount of money to be raised through property taxes. State senators and Gov. Eliot Spitzer struck a deal that gave $205 million in additional education aid to Long Island school districts.
³We were very pleased with this,² said Superintendent Dr. Herb Brown.
While this year¹s budget is without any new big-ticket items, the board proposed to significantly increase the district¹s investment in video conferencing, a technology that allows students to communicate with their peers in places of learning, from schools to museums, in other cities and countries. The board is budgeting about $70,000 for the technology, up from the $10,000-$12,000 that the district has invested in recent years. Oceanside provides video conferencing to about 350 of its teachers at most of its schools, but aims to eventually equip all of its teachers.
³It is a lot compared to other districts, but it¹s certainly not a lot in general for a district our size,² Brown said.
The board also budgeted about $50,000 to expand the district¹s mentoring programs for ³at risk² students in various grades and for high school freshmen. The funds will pay for more teachers to work with these students.
³We¹ve found that we¹re able to help kids by having teachers spend extra time with them before and after school,² Brown said. ³We feel that there are more students that can benefit, so that¹s why we¹re expanding it.²
The budget also seeks to expand on the district¹s Center for Cultural Diversity at School 6 and its guided reading, a program of small group instruction for 1st graders, up to 30 minutes each day. The district is also budgeting to hire a teacher for its inaugural Mandarin Chinese class at the high school.
The district¹s usual big ticket items, such as teachers¹ salaries, health care, retirement and fuel oil, are essentially status quo. The teachers¹ contract, which expires in 2010, will provide a 3.5 increase in salary next year. While retirement contributions rose to 8 percent this year, health care increases fell to about 8 percent from the usual 15 percent increase, Brown said.
Last year, the district completed work on a three-year bond project that included new boilers in schools, which, Transom said, will save the district an estimated 1 percent on the budgets in fuel costs. ³That was one of the significant things we noticed this year,² Transom said.
In addition to increased state aid, another factor that helped Oceanside reduce the tax levy increase was additional funding that residents voted to approve in February. By a vote of 1,134 to 53, they gave the district the go-ahead to use $1.9 million in available funding through the state¹s Expanding Our Children¹s Education and Learning (EXCEL) program, a one-shot deal made possible after a court order required the state to provide more building aid to New York City schools to address long-standing inequities in funding.
Among the bigger ticket items the EXCEL money will fund are new boilers at the high school at $300,000 and new auditorium seats at the middle school at $117,000. If voters had turned down the EXCEL funding, the board would have likely included the capital expenses in the budget over the next five years. Because of the EXCEL vote, the district was able to cut its capital budget this year by about $250,000, Brown said.
In 2006, voters narrowly approved the $111.4 million budget, with just under 1,900 votes for it and 1,750 against it.
The budget and school board election vote in Oceanside will be held from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. on May 15, at schools 5, 6, 7 and 8.
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 287.
