Last week's announcement from the Levittown Superintendent of Schools Dr. Herman Sirois about the 2006-07 budget overexpenditure came as a shock to district officials and residents.

Dr. Sirois informed the Levittown Board of Education that the 2006-07 budget was overexpended by about 2 percent. The analysis confirmed that isolated accounting errors resulted in funds not being included in the 2006-07 and 2007-08 budgets. The 2006-07 was $157 million and the 2007-08 budget was $167 million.

"There is a potential there for $7 million but since they caught the error early in this year's budget year, it should not affect this year," Dr. Sirois later told the Levittown Tribune.

Throughout each school year an appropriation and expenditure report is generated to monitor the budget.

"The numbers for some teachers' salaries were not encumbered so that means the money shows up as available," he continued. "This year's budget started on July 1, and those same numbers were not encumbered, but [the Interim Assistant Superintendent of Business and Finance] Mark Schissler picked up on it."

Schissler replaced Jeffrey Carlson, who left his position this past June for a job in another school district.

Now Dr. Sirois said the district is looking to deal with this by trimming the budget wherever possible, while trying not to take it out on the kids by cutting programs and services.

"We will hold off on buying new buses, hold off on some capital projects and then make adjustments in the budget expenditures," he added. "We are sticking by the same tax levy projections and the reserves that they have in the multiyear budget allows them to deal with this."

In a press release last week Dr. Sirois reaffirmed that the district's multiyear budget process was specifically designed to deal with unexpected problems such as this, and informed the board that recent changes in staff and assignments will assure that this issue is both corrected and will not happen again. He also said that he was confident that the district would be able to resolve these errors without any adverse effect on school taxes.

As for preventing this from happening in the future, Dr. Sirois said it is tough because New York State has measures in place about monitoring the budget, such as you can't audit until the school year is over.

"I plan on reviewing these appropriation and expenditure reports publicly and have them verified independently," he added.

Levittown resident and Budget Advisory Committee member Ralph Chicas said he believes people will be looking at the budget numbers more thoroughly than in previous years.

"I also anticipate a large number of concerned residents signing up this year to review the budget numbers," he added. "Many tough questions will be asked during that process. I personally expect to spend long hours working and reviewing other aspects of the budget that we didn't have access to in the past."

(Freelance writer Ryan Mulholland contributed to this story.)