West Hempstead school board gets glimpse of proposed budget

   Throughout the next two months, the West Hempstead Board of Education will face the challenging task of reviewing and revamping the 2010-2011 proposed budget, which was presented to the board last week by Richard Cunningham, assistant superintendent of business and operations.
    Sitting in the video conference room at West Hempstead High School the night of Tuesday, March 2, board members listened as the proposed $55.4 million budget was broken down into details and Cunningham explained the need for a 5.3 percent ($2.795 million) increase from last year's budget.
    Among the areas that required the largest proposed increases, which together totaled about $2.28 million, were instruction costs, interfund transfers and transportation expenses.
    The increase in instruction costs, which account for nearly 60 percent of the budget, was about $1.59 million. Included in those costs are expenses relating to teaching equipment and supplies; salaries of teachers, aids and administrators; health and psychology services; and co-curricular and interscholastic activities.
    While certain expenditures related to interfund transfers –– which includes debt service, employee benefits and capital expenses –– decreased, others drastically rose: employee benefits, for example, went up by $905,280,
    Transportation costs, particularly those related to contracted transportation, increased, jumping from around $5 million in the 2009-2010 school year to more than $5.42 million for 2010-2011.
    The West Hempstead school district was, however, able to cut some expenses in the areas of data processing, auditing and public information and services. There is a downward trend in those areas, according to Cunningham, because the district is shifting to more paperless methods of communications and recording, as well as preparing its own financial statements instead of outsourcing them. Cunningham said the district is also in the process of calculating how much it should budget to deal with the use of facilities as it relates to overtime.