A handful of Levittown residents gathered closely around the Board of Education's semicircle for a tight-knit fourth and final budget meeting on March 28, where the BOE would approve the 2007-2008 school budget . Expectations were that the three previous budget meetings would clear up any concerns and uncertainties, but over three-and-a-half hours later, with bleary eyes all around and midnight approaching, there was still no approval in sight.

Levittown Superintendent Dr. Herman Sirois set a target tax levy of under 5 percent but after Assistant Superintendent for Business and Finance Jeff Carlson crunched the numbers, the levy came in at 5.9 percent which arose much concern from the board.

"This leaves us in very dangerous territory," Board of Education Vice President John Garvey said. "The seven of us will have a tough time defending the turf field."

The turf field Garvey referred to includes the implementation of $3 million into the expenditures portion of the budget to add lights and field turf to both the MacArthur and Division Avenue football fields, which the board approved on a 5-2 vote. This renovation would not impact the tax levy, however, there was concern on the board's behalf that the perception would be the turf and lights are the reason for the high levy.

After a 15-minute private meeting between Dr. Sirois, Carlson and Assistant Superintendent Victor Longaro, they came back with a solution to get the levy down to 4.77 percent, for a 2007/08 budget total of $109.97 million.

"We came up with the 4.77 because that assures us that the tax increase over the next five years won't exceed 7 percent," Dr. Sirois said. "Our tax increase will be one of the lowest in the county. And other districts' plans won't be as stable as ours."

The total expenditures of the budget came in at $167.8 million, which was an increase of 6.49 percent over last year. The increases in the budget stem from the hiring of a new social worker, additions to the summer tutorial program, two new middle school music teachers and a guidance counselor, among other things, which total $421,300 in increases. In addition, the $3 million for the turf and lights are also part of the increase.

"As good as it sounds," Garvey said about the turf and lights, "it could be problematic."

Before anything happens on this front, the bond vote has to be approved by the public.

One of the proposals that went by the board was the addition of an Introduction to Engineering course to be piloted at Division Avenue High School, which would have been a one-time cost of $175,000. After it initially seemed that this would be an easy approval, there became confusion on how many students actually need to be signed up for a class for it to be piloted.

Eighteen students were signed up, but Longaro said for best results, they should be split into two classes of nine. With no actual clarification on what specific number of students need to be signed up for a pilot class, Board Trustee Mike Moriarty said he believed that it was 15 per class, which in turn persuaded the board to reject the new class by a vote of 4-3.

Board Secretary Roseanne Gullans who voted in favor of the course, was very unhappy with the decision and said, "we just turned down an engineering class for students so we can worry about turf fields instead."

The budget vote will take place Tuesday, May 15, and at least 14 days before then copies of the budget will be available to the public at LMEC and in all principals' offices in the district.

The next regular Board of Education meeting will be Wednesday, April 11 at 8 p.m. at LMEC.