A lot of Bellmore residents may have been lulled into a false sense of security. No matter what they did, they believed, the budget would pass. Of course, it didn't.
In times such as these, when many people are feeling the property-tax pinch and school districts are under greater scrutiny because of the Roslyn financial scandal, no district can take for granted that its budget will pass.
The Bellmore district will revote the budget on Monday, June 20. We hope and trust that the recent budget defeat will serve as a wake-up call for Bellmore residents: They must act if they want their school spending plan to pass. Certainly, the naysayers will be out in force on June 20.
Now is the time to get involved. Call friends and neighbors. Tell them that this budget is worth supporting. Support the PTA, which is pulling out all the stops to get the yes vote out on June 20. And of course - vote.
Bellmore has among the lowest per-pupil expenditures of Nassau's top-performing districts. Shooting the budget down might lower your taxes a little, but it would do nothing to maintain the schools' reputation for excellence. Losing that reputation could cost homeowners thousands in equity if the Bellmore real-estate scene were to dry up even a little because the quality of its education system declined.
Finally, the naysayers state in their most recent flier that Bellmore school officials should be ashamed. They, the flier contends, are willing to cut student programming but not administrative costs.
The administrative budget, including the contractually obligated salary part, isn't out of line when compared with other Long Island middle- to upper-middle-class communities. If anything, it's smaller than many others. Relatively inconsequential cuts to the administrative budget may be possible, but they would nowhere near amount to the more than $700,000 that would be necessary to slash under an austerity budget. In the end, student programming would probably have to be reduced, and learning would suffer.
The Herald endorses the Bellmore budget without reservation.
