At a Special Meeting on Wednesday, May 26, the Levittown Board of Education discussed the resubmission of the 1999-2000 budget and heard various responses from residents on the budget failure.

The special meeting opened with the Public Be Heard portion of the meeting. At that time many community members voiced their opinions about the budget failure and what the district's response should be to that failure.

The first speaker urged the board to wait until the last week in July or the first week in August to resubmit the budget. This idea of waiting before resubmitting the budget and considering changes in the budget rather than resubmitting it for a June 22 vote as the board's resolution stated, was raised a number of times throughout the meeting by both residents and board members.

Roxanne Boneillo, president of the Levittown Council of PTAs spoke on behalf of the council, stating that they had voted unanimously to support a revote of the budget. Lisa Vanderburg, co-president of the Lee Road PTA, spoke on behalf of the PTA when asking the board to consider the resubmission of the budget. Speaking for herself she said, "Shame on the parents of 7,000 students who did not come out to vote." Several of the residents who encouraged a revote of the budget brought dozens of letters from other residents with the same request.

The district's proclamation that STAR would help alleviate the budget increase bothered several residents. One asked if the district would cut their taxes if STAR does not continue. He also encouraged the district to accept the defeat of the budget, noting that 7 percent was a large margin contrary to the board's beliefs. These thoughts were echoed by others. One resident asked why the board felt they had the right to take all of their STAR savings. Others reiterated the thought that the failure of the budget by 7 percent was a large margin.

Gary Fisch, who served on the budget committee stated that there was no instance of what the budget committee submitted in the budget. He also encouraged the board to wait until the end of July or beginning of August and resubmit a revised budget.

The last speaker implored the board to consider younger families when reconsidering the budget. She pointed out that the budget increase is more than the cost of living increases in their salaries and noted that with this increase it not fair to families who are struggling to get by.

Following the Public Be Heard session, Herman Sirois, superintendent of schools, answered several questions that were raised and tried to clear up any misunderstandings. One such misunderstanding he addressed was regarding STAR. He commented that the district never intended to take credit for STAR and only said that the budget increases would be levelled out by the STAR refund. Another misunderstanding that he spoke of was his statement in the May 21 Levittown Tribune, where he said that a contingency budget would result in the cut of $600,000 in teaching positions. Assistant Superintendent for Business Alan Groveman noted that what that means is not that those teachers would be cut but that the equivalent of that would have to be cut from certain areas of the budget and that the district is limited in the areas where the cuts can come from.

The board and administration discussed various issues related to the resubmission of the budget and Sirois noted that the board had four options. The first option, he said, would be to do nothing and adopt a contingency budget, the second would be to resubmit the same budget, the third option would be to resubmit a lower budget and the fourth option would be to resubmit a higher budget.

Board Vice President George Bruno said he believed that they should hold off on a decision and consider cutting the budget. Board Trustee Michael Moriarity said, "I don't feel that at this point if the budget is put up it will pass." He added that he did not want to waste the money on a revote if the budget would not pass. Bruno added that he would rather have a later vote and have it pass than have a July vote and not have it pass. The board is limited in the amount of time they can wait though because the state mandates they must have a budget by Aug. 15.

The six members of the board voted to table the discussion until a later meeting. Later in the evening after most of the residents left, the board voted to hold a special meeting on June 2 to consider the possible resubmission of the budget for a vote on June 22 with a public hearing on June 9. As of press time the results of this special meeting were not yet known. Further details about the district's decision will be available in next week's Levittown Tribune.