According to the Levittown School District, the board of education extended its budget planning calendar by one week to arrive at a decrease in the proposed expenditures and the tax impact of the initial 2008/09 school budget recommended by the Superintendent of Schools Dr. Herman Sirois.

According to Interim Assistant Superintendent of Business and Finance Mark Schissler, the board adopted a budget of $178,288,762 on April 2. This represents a 2.02 percent increase over the 2007/08 budget, which was $174,762,201.

The resulting plan reduces the proposed expenditures by $1,500,000, and reduces the tax impact from 6.25 percent to 3.58 percent, a reduction of over 40 percent. The district is also receiving $46,074,593 in state aid this year, a $2,033,974 increase from the 2007/08 school year.

The largest reduction in the budget comes from OPEB Reserve [other post-employment benefits]. OPEBs are fringe benefits provided to retired and former employees other than pension benefits. The projected reduction from the 2007/08 to 2008/09 school year is $2,125,228.

"The district will not need the same amount of money that was budgeted in 2007/08 for the 2008/09 school year," Assistant Business Manager/Treasurer Shai Carmel explained. "Therefore, we were able to budget a lower amount for 2008/09 from the reserve account, and as a result, to keep our tax levy increase to only 3.58 percent."

According to a district press release, "both the board of education and the superintendent of schools agreed that a lower expenditure and a lower tax increase were necessary, and was the best thing that all parties could do for the residents of the school district this year."

Sirois noted that the administration had submitted a budget that met all of the guidelines established by the board of education last October, including a revised five-year budget plan that assured no projected tax increase would be greater than 7 percent during any of the next five years. After considerable deliberation of the initial 6.25 percent proposed increase, the board of education determined that the tax implications of his original proposal were simply too high, and needed to be lowered.

"The board did two things - they directed the administration to do a multi-year budget analysis that brought another $1.4 million into budget from state aid, rather than spread it out over other years," Sirois explained.

He cautioned that by claiming more state aid to lower the tax levy for next year means that the district cannot promise future tax increases will continue to be below 7 percent. He was quick to add, however, that the district would certainly continue to try to keep future increases under that long-term target.

After a new 4.5 percent proposed increase was offered by the administration, the board then sought to reduce expenditures by $1.5 million, which equated to a little over 1 percent of the budget.

"At the time they didn't say where to take the money out," he added. "They did say 'do not reduce programs or services' and the administration agreed."

Sirois said the administration would alter some of their schedules such bus replacement, student furniture purchases and equipment upgrades, etc. in order to help reduce expenditures.

"You can only do so much of those things and we have done some in the past," he explained. "We are going to go through the budget and tweak whatever efficiencies we can. We have about half of the money accounted for and we're still looking for half."

Board President Gina Interdonato said, "Overall, this is great news for our community. The board of education is proud that the district has been able, once again, to provide our residents with much lower, perhaps even lower than half the tax increases that most other school districts have done in Nassau County for each of the four school years from 2005 through 2009, including the proposed budget."

Sirois added that although this had been a tough year for the district, this is "a very sound budget."

"It has corrected all the errors," he explained.

It was announced at a March 18 budget planning session that teacher cuts would be made. At that meeting, Dr. Sirois said this year's staffing changes were "no different than any other year."

"I want to assure all of you that the staffing for next year's budget has nothing at all to do with the budget errors that were made last year," he said, referring to last year's $7 million budget gap.

Carmel also recently confirmed the staffing changes.

"As of now, it appears that there will be a reduction of approximately 10 elementary teacher positions and 15 secondary teacher positions," he explained. "This is all due to reduced enrollment on the elementary level, and to class schedules on the secondary level. It should be noted that the district will also be hiring nine new teachers for other programs."

However former Levittown Board of Education president James Ward said he "suspects we'll be seeing greater layoffs than Dr. Sirois claimed."

The Citizens Advisory Committee, a group of community volunteers which makes various recommendations to the board and administration about the budget, is not recommending the 2008/09 budget this year.

"However, that does not imply that we are voting against the budget," Committee Chairperson Jason Feiner said. "At this time based on process items and oddities in the budgeted figures the committee cannot put forth a recommendation on the budget as now presented. The committee has gotten a wealth of information this year. This information could have been presented differently and the board and the administration have said that they would work to that end with us. The committee is looking forward to working more closely with the board during next year. We are happy to assist the board to reach a point where we feel the budget is in the best fiscal representation as possible."

Sirois said he realizes the committee is reluctant to make a recommendation until all the budget errors are fully fixed.

"They are in a position where all the pieces weren't together for them and the information that they had was really overwhelming and they just couldn't bring themselves to actually recommend it and what if something was wrong," he added.

The budget vote and trustee election will be held on Tuesday, May 20. Voter registration is ongoing Monday through Friday from 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m. in the district clerk's office at LMEC. For more information call 520-8300, ext. 550. To view the list of polling places according to streets visit www.levittownschools.com.