School Budget Represents No Tax Levy Increase

Numbers were bounced around at the Long Beach School District’s March 8 board meeting after Superintendent Dr. Robert Greenberg released a draft of his 2011-12 proposed budget that totals $118.6 million.

While the spending plan is $2.1 million larger than the current budget, representing a 1.8 percent hike, it features a 0 percent increase in the tax levy, the amount of money raised by taxes.

The budget’s $2.1 million increase reflects the initial interest payments on a $98 million bond that the community approved in 2009 to fund the first phase of a district-wide preservation project to upgrade schools and facilities.

“We are going out to borrow in order to finance the preservation plan that the community supported two years ago,” Superintendent Dr. Robert Greenberg said at Tuesday’s meeting at the Middle School.

Both Greenberg and Michael DeVito, the district’s chief operating officer, who unveiled and broke down the budget, said that its final version depends on the fate of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposed  $132.9 billion budget at a time when the state looks to address a $10 billion deficit.

Cuomo’s spending plan represents a cut of about $2.5 million in state aid to Long Beach, more than $2 million less than the district expected to receive for 2011-12 and $3.3 million less than it received under the current plan.

To compensate for this lost revenue, the district proposes to tap its reserve fund, at about $3 million, and fund balance, approximately $4 million, which are surpluses accumulated over seven years.    

“The good news is that our other revenue sources are going up by $1.1 million,” DeVito said.

Among these other revenue sources is tuition the district receives from Island Park students who attend Long Beach High School.

The budget’s larger percentage increases come in form of state mandates, including teachers’ retirement and health insurance, as well as unemployment insurance, which is projected to go up 333 percent, from $30,000 to $130,000.   

About this particular increase, DeVito said that the district was not sufficiently funded in previous years. “So next year’s [figure] is actually more in line with what our actual costs have been,” he explained.

Greenberg said that while the district will add teachers in some areas, overall there will be a greater reduction of in teacher positions this year, about 13 in all, but that these actions are not budget-driven.

“The reductions in staffing are due to enrollment, and not necessarily tied to the budgets,” said Greenberg, who noted that he will have more specifics to report about these reductions at the March 22 board meeting.

Steve Freeman, president Long Beach Classroom Teachers Association, thanked Greenberg and DeVito for presenting a “courageous budget” and urged them to maintain programs.

Greenberg emphasized that the budget maintains all existing programs, but Lynn Gergen, a former school board trustee, worried that perhaps he and DeVito had devised an underfunded budget.

“I want to know that in brining in this lower budget, that you feel comfortable that you are protecting this district with this budget,” Gergen asked Greenberg.

The superintendent said that he did not believe the budget was too low. “I think that when all is considered, the fact that we have the debt to repay and we’re not getting state aid for another year, we did what we could.”

Damien Sciano, a Long Beach resident who had previously served on the district’s facilities committee, questioned the district’s budgeting practices, especially in relation to the decline in student enrollment and costs per student, and predicted the district will soon fall on hard times. “I think you’re covering up a fairly significant deficit, where you’re going to fall off a cliff in a year or two,” Sciano said.

Greenberg disagreed with Sciano’s forecast.

The district’s budget advisory committee will make its recommendations at the March 22 meeting. The community will vote on the budget on May 17. The seats of school board trustees Dennis Ryan and Patrick Gallagher are up for re-election.