RSS 2.0 FeedMay 13, 2011, Wantagh Seaford Citizen
Proposed school budgets on May 17 ballot
Residents of Wantagh, Seaford and Levittown will vote on proposed school budgets on May 17 for the 2011-2012 school year.
Wantagh
The Wantagh School District will place a $70,194,507 million budget on the May 17 ballot. This budget represents a 1.46% increase over this year’s budget and a tax levy increase of 3.99%. For a home assessed at $411,600, a resident would pay $311 more in taxes.
Dr. Lydia Begley, superintendent of Wantagh Schools, told The Citizen in an earlier interview that this budget was the lowest budget-to-budget increase in 11 years.
The school board announced last week that the district and its teachers’ union, Wantagh United Teachers, reached a four-year contract agreement that holds the teachers’ salary increase to three-quarters of 1% for the current and coming school years and 0% for the following one. District and building administrators will receive no salary increase in the coming school year. Coaching and extracurricular salaries are frozen through June 2014, stated the district on its website.
Wantagh will lose almost $2 million in state aid. Additionally, the district is facing increasing costs for retirement contributions. For the 2011-2012 year that cost will be approximately $3.5 million. Unfunded mandates account for another $1.8 million for the 2011-2012 school year.
To help offset these costs, the district will use $2 million from the general fund, plus $565,000 from the reserves to keep the tax levy increase down.
The 2011-2012 budget preserves academic programs and keeps the current class size at the elementary level.
A new class in electronic keyboarding will be given at the middle school and eighth grade students will receive new social studies textbooks.
Meanwhile at the high school, a new class in digital media publishing will be offered to students.
All sports teams are intact including separate grade 7-8 teams.
Three candidates are running for two seats on the Wantagh school board. They are incumbent Michael Cucci along with Michael Soethout and Mitch Zerner.
Additional information can be found at the district website, www.wantagh schools.org.
Seaford
The Seaford School District will place a $55,181,680 million budget on the May 17 ballot. This budget represents a 2.92% budget-to-budget increase and an 8.99% tax levy increase. For a home assessed at $378,500, this represents an increase of $600 in taxes, copared to $543 with a contingency (defeated) budget.
In a letter to The Citizen, Brian Conboy, superintendent of Seaford Schools and school board President Brian Fagan told The Citizen “the process of where and what to cut was a painful and emotional one for the administration and the board. Increased class sizes, reductions in curricular and extracurricular programs, test preparation academies, summer reading and math programs, elimination of most chairpeople and line-by-line analysis of the entire district budget were necessary.”
Seaford will lose $1.5 million in state aid and has not yet replaced the revenue it lost from the rental of the vacant Seaford Avenue School.
Additionally, the district is one of the 10% in the state that does not have reserve funds from which to draw. Over the last six years, those funds, totaling about $6.4 million, have been used to keep the tax levy down.
This budget eliminates 25 full- and part-time positions including 10 teachers, 12 chairperson positions and three custodial and clerical persons. It ends the summer remediation program and the test prep academies during the school year as well as reducing the seventh grade boys and girls basketball program and the seventh grade girls volleyball program.
The district did not receive any give- backs from the teachers’ union, as did some nearby school districts in Merrick and Bellmore. This coming school year, Seaford teachers are due to receive a 2.5% increase, plus steps. As of July, teachers will contribute 16.5% to the costs for health insurance.
