By Jesse Serwer
Thanks in part to unfunded mandates coming from Washington and Albany, the pinch is even harder this year for local public school districts, who must take from other parts of their existing budget to pay for these new requirements while struggling with increased costs for the things they already fund.
While attendance was small, the minute details of the school number crunching process were on public display Friday as the Rockville Centre school district held an open budget hearing at South Side High School. The objective for this year: adopt a budget showing less than a seven percent increase over last year's budget of $71.3 million.
A major roadblock will be new federal guidelines requiring the standardized testing of all students in grades three through eight in both math and English Language Arts, according to Superintendent William Johnson. "Preparing ourselves for these tests made the top of our list in terms of priorities," Johnson said. "These teachers and these children will be under intense pressure that we have not experienced in the past."
The board was also confronted with a dilemma about whether they should they reduce the class size capacity in grades three, four and five to 26, or introduce a foreign language program for students in the third or fourth grade.
"There is so much evidence that if you teach a child a second language in elementary school that it improves their ability in their first language, and in language arts later on," said Johnson. He added that given the $140,000 price tag of such a program smaller class size would have to be the priority.
While Rockville Centre schools' annual election and budget vote will be held May 17 following a public hearing at South Side High School May 3, the budget may still be at the mercy of number of unresolved issues such as the amount of state aid coming from Albany, and the possibility that school districts will be required to hire external certified public accountants to do their auditing in light of the Roslyn school district scandal.
"Right now we have two district employees who do the auditing but they are not CPAs," said Robert Bartels, superintendent for business for Rockville Centre schools. "This could create a dramatic increase in the amount we spend annually,in excess of $40,000."
Comments on this story? JSerwer@liherald.com or 569-4000 ext. 221.
