Among Brown's other titles is chairperson of Superintendents' Legislative Committee of Nassau County. Last week, Herald editor Joseph Kellard sat down with Brown at his administrative office to discuss budgetary issues. New York state has offered Oceanside School District $1.9 million to spend on construction projects through a funding program called Expanding Our Children's Education and Learning (EXCEL). Can you explain EXCEL, and why the school district's residents must vote on whether or not to accept its funds on Feb. 28?
As a result of the New York City lawsuit [filed by] the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, the state decided last year to give the city money for construction. There were two parts to the lawsuit ‹ instruction and construction. Gov. Pataki was dealing with construction last year, and since he was giving the city money to build new schools and repair existing schools, the state Legislature convinced him to give other schools construction money for their schools, too. As a result of that, Oceanside is being offered $1.9 million for construction projects under this EXCEL grant.
Our Buildings and Grounds Committee of residents and board members came up with the projects. In New York state, you have to do construction with the approval of the voters, even if the money is coming as a state grant. So in order to accept this grant money, the voters have to give us authority to take money from the state and spend it on construction. That's why there is going to be a vote on Wednesday, Feb. 28 at the regular polling places where people vote each May. If they vote "yes," then we're going to do the construction projects that we have outlined. If [they vote] "no," then we'll have to do these construction projects in future budgets, which will add to the tax rate. There's no tax implication to accepting this nearly $2 million. What's the average amount the district budgets for capital projects each year, and about what percent of that cost will be offset by this EXCEL funding, if approved?
In recent years, we've been budgeting about $300,000 a year for capital projects. In the budget for next year, we're currently budgeting about $100,000 for capital projects. Assuming the EXCEL money is accepted on Feb. 28, we're going to be able to lower that budget from this year's $300,000 to $100,000. In other years we've had to budget for $600,000. Oceanside proposes to spend the EXCEL funds on a sound system at the high school and middle school, boilers at OHS and School 4, auditorium seats at OMS and School 2, upgraded underground cables and a transformer at School 6, a fire alarm system at School 8 and asbestos abatement at Schools 2,3,5 and 6. The district just completed a three-year district-wide construction project, including the installation of new boilers and renovations to auditoriums ‹ paid for with a $28 million bond. Why weren't some of these items included in that bond project?
I think whenever you put a bond together, there has to be an upper limit. The board looks at projects and then says, "I think $28 million is as much as we would like to ask the community to spend at this point." So you have to sort of draw a line as to what's most pressing.
The vote for that bond took place in 2003. So now, four years later, you take a fresh look at things, and there's some asbestos that is coming up that wasn't there four years ago, and the underground cables back then weren't worn, and a potential problem, as they are now. The boilers we propose to do work on are not the same boilers. The ones we did work on had priority at that time. Now our high school and School 4 boilers are in disrepair, and we're spending a lot of money during the year just to repair some of these things. So you save money on that end also. Last year, Sen. Dean Skelos and Assembly members Harvey Weisenberg and Bob Barra secured an additional $1.4 million in state aid for Oceanside, which the district used to reduce the tax levy, which is the amount of money raised by property taxes. Does Oceanside anticipate this or similar aid again this budget season?
In Gov. Spitzer's budget proposal, Oceanside got an additional $500,000, which, if I recall correctly, was about 3.3 percent, which is a good starting point. And we're hoping to work with our state representatives to try to increase that. Because I think most people know, if they're homeowners, that things like health insurance and fuel oil go up more than 3 percent. And we have a school district where fuel oil and health insurance and things of that nature, if they go up more than 3 percent, then 3 percent in state aid is a step in the right direction, but it doesn't cover the increase.
We [sponsored] a forum on Friday [Feb. 9] in East Meadow, that [I actually ran for all the county's 56 school districts, where [we probably had] more than 200 people comprising PTA presidents, board members, superintendents and business officials ... talking about Gov. Spitzer's proposal, the tax assessments of Nassau County and what we feel people need to say to their school districts and representatives.
Even though Gov. Spitzer's proposal was good for some high-need districts, like Uniondale and possibly Westbury, it was not all that good for average-need districts, and those districts experience the same problems in terms of fuel oil and health insurance. The districts just aren't getting enough money if they're not a high-need district. Oceanside is considered a low-need district. Oceanside has joined Reform Educational Financing Inequities Today (REFIT), a consortium of school districts that have banded together to secure a greater share of state aid. Explain the goals and activities of this consortium, and why you believe it benefits Oceanside to be involved with REFIT?
I think when you join together with other districts for a common purpose, your voice gets heard sometimes more than when you do it by yourself. So we joined with these other districts whose goal is to secure more state aid for their districts on Long Island and around the state. I'm on REFIT's board of directors, and as part of that [on Feb. 8] Al Lyson [Oceanside Board of Education president] and I [had a] lunch with our legislators, along with the other members of REFIT's board of directors and their board presidents, [and talked] about securing more state aid for REFIT districts, and [discussed] why Gov. Spitzer's budget is a good starting point for certain districts, but Long Island as a whole is not getting its fair share.
The 120 districts on Long Island are getting 8 percent of new money that Gov. Spitzer is giving out, [even though] we educate 17 percent of the students in the state. Prior to Gov. Spitzer, we were getting 12 percent of all the money. So we weren't getting enough last year. We're still getting the 12 percent from last year, but the 8 percent of new money is going to bring that 12 percent down a little bit, to maybe 11.5 percent. So instead of working to the 17 percent, because we have 17 percent of the students and our goal is to get 17 percent of the aid, it's going the other way with Gov. Spitzer's proposal.
So even though he's giving money to high-need districts like Westbury and Uniondale, Long Island as a whole is suffering under his new proposal because we're only getting 8 percent of the new money. People say that Long Island is wealthy and should be subsidizing upstate ‹ but it's more expensive to live here. The reason we're not getting 17 percent of the money is that when they give out the money, they don't consider the cost of living here. They need to put regional cost factors into the state aid formulas so that we'll get more money. They'll understand that what $100 buys up near the Canadian border in New York state doesn't buy on Long Island. The statistics are showing it buys about $66 worth of services on Long Island compared to the north. So even though people have higher incomes on Long Island, things are more costly here. One REFIT goal is to ensure that state and federal governments recognize the "enormous burden placed on school districts by spiraling health insurance, energy, pension and [No Child Left Behind] costs, thereby necessitating that we vigorously pursue a moratorium on any new unfunded mandates." How can school districts like Oceanside act independently to reduce or maintain costs in areas like health insurance, pensions and teachers' salaries?
Through our negotiations with our bargaining units. What Oceanside has done in the area of health insurance is they've negotiated contracts where full-time employees pay 15 percent of the premium, and the retired employees pay 50 percent of the premium, and that is the most that they are allowed to pay by law. And for their spouse they have to pay 65 percent of the premium, which again is the highest allowed by law. ... More people tend to leave us because we only pay 50 percent, and that saves the taxpayers millions of dollars a year ... So the board has basically negotiated the best deals in terms of retirement.
The other thing they negotiate is salaries. We have a contract in place where our staff gets a 3.5 percent raise next year that's been negotiated, which is the cost of living or slightly above it, in an effort to attract excellent teachers. Our contract also has the lowest starting salary on Long Island because it's negotiable. We're the only district on Long Island that doesn't have a step one. Basically, if there is another district that has a step one that says $50,000, and you're a new teacher, I say, well, you have step one, you're going to get $50,000, because that's what the contract says. In Oceanside, there is no step one. It's blank. Therefore, I say to you, "Well, you're just coming out of college, I'm going to offer you $40,000." And you say, "Okay, I really need this job, I'll take it." Well, I just saved the taxpayer $10,000 compared to in almost every one of the other 120 school districts.
We save the taxpayers $100,000 a year in teachers' salaries based on the fact that teachers do not go on to the contract until their third year, because there is no step two either.
In terms of the retirement system, that's really out of our control. The rates are set by the state teacher retirement board and we just have to pay them. That's just an unfunded mandate. We really have no way of negotiating lower rates for teacher retirement. After the budget vote last May, you said that the 1,900 voters who approved the budget "reaffirmed that what we're doing is something they approve of in terms of our educational process and keeping the tax levy below 5 percent," and that "1,750 people said 'no,' and I'm sure it was because of high taxes and other areas of concern." What do you think are those "other areas of concern?"
Well, I think there are probably too many to mention, because sometimes I think many people have individual "areas of concern." We have 6,300 kids and 500 teachers in the district, and the overwhelming majority of our kids and parents think the schools are wonderful. But if you have an individual concern, whether it's the bus not showing up on time and your child is standing there freezing, or you think a textbook is too old for a particular subject, or last year's teacher was different from this year's teacher, or class size ‹ there's a whole bunch of issues. Everybody can have their own issues.
What I was saying last year is that property taxes are everybody's number one issue, but other people can vote "no" because of other particular issues that may be different than other people. But property taxes are the thread that runs through everything. In recent years Oceanside has expressed concern over narrow vote margins to pass the budget, particularly after voters turned down the budget at first in 2004. One measure the district took to correct this was to mail out budgetary information in newsletters throughout the school year rather than during just the second semester. What has the district learned from such measures, and what have you and your colleagues looked at more closely that you may have overlooked in the past?
Well, we've learned a lot more about the assessment process in Nassau County. And we've learned a lot about how people hold us responsible for being taxed because of their assessment going up disproportionately to their neighbors. If their taxes went up 10 percent and the schools are responsible for 5 percent of it, they kind of hold us responsible for the 10 percent increase because they don't know who else to hold responsible. They don't have a face on the assessment board. [County Assessor Harvey] Levinson is the face but he's not local.
I think we certainly try to work with our legislators in keeping the assessments in check. There are some assessment issues now we are working on with them ‹ one being to try to prevent the assessor from pushing more costs on the school district, which he's trying to do in various ways. And that's going to cost the taxpayers more money.
What we control is our budget, and we feel that we have 6,300 kids who need to be educated in district. We have another 700 kids who choose to go to private and parochial schools or they've been assigned to special ed schools outside the district, and we pay for their busing, textbooks and health services. And we look at our budget and try to come in with the lowest possible budget that will provide the services that we think the kids need.
So what have we learned? We've learned that we have to get our message out whenever possible to the voters. We've learned that there's different ways to get the message out, that even though it's all about taxes, we had 150 parents at a workshop we sponsored talking about cyberbullying and child abduction. We had 600 parents come to our Rachel's Challenge workshop. When we provide services to people, we give our senior citizens free tickets to our plays and concerts. Instead of just saying to people, we know taxes are high but we need more money, we're trying to show them the value that they get for living in Oceanside and being part of the school district. Last year, Al Lyson said that he thought "too big a portion of the population doesn't trust us, for whatever reason," and speculated that some voters believe teachers make too much money, or that the district has too many administrators. What are your thoughts on his comments, and how does the district address issues like trust with its residents?
Well, I think it's all about trust, to tell you the truth. I think if people have confidence and trust you, they're more likely to trust you with their money ... Trust, I think, is the most important [thing] that we can try to ingrain in a population, and the way you ingrain trust is, number one, you try to convince them that you are spending their dollars wisely.
I think we have a reputation for trying to save money and spending wisely. But there's always new people coming in, so we always have to keep reminding them, and that's our biggest challenge. People coming in, for example, don't necessarily know that we decided to self-insure for workers compensation 20 years ago, and as a result of that we're saving the taxpayers millions of dollars.
So we have this continuing reeducation program with new residents. And it's an ongoing educational issue to try to show people that you can trust us with your money and your kids, that you're getting value for your money.
I agree with Mr. Lyson that trust is the most important thing. If people feel we have too many teachers or administrators, we try to explain to them what we do and why it's necessary.
Comments about this Q & A? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 287.
