This evening, April 6, the Roslyn Board of Education will vote to approve the 2006-2007 budget. The final hearing on the budget came at the March 30 public meeting. A vote on the budget will take place during the May 16 elections.

Stanley Stern, president of the BOE said the board, while finishing up the final draft of the budget was "moving ahead with some major issues."

He said the approved budget would reinstate the foreign language program for elementary school students. Stern said the new program, if approved by the voters, would be one "more efficiently run" than the previous one.

As the April 6 deadline was approaching, the board, Stern said, is "still deliberating the most appropriate way to deliver summer programs." At the meeting, board member Dani Klein said that since the programs serve the area's neediest students, the school district should oversee any summer programs, rather than having them outsourced to another agency.

Concerning building improvements, the BOE hopes to have a $4 million capital plan in place. That number, Stern said, would come from recovered funds for the district.

The capital plan program, Stern added, would place an emphasis on repairs to school district buildings to improve safety and to meet building codes. Such a plan would also seek to repair the grounds at all the district's schools, plus its sports fields, which Stern admitted are currently in "bad condition."

Finally, there is a rumor that a petition is being circulated throughout the village, one that would put a referendum on the May 16 ballot.

That referendum would call for the elimination of the district's universal busing program. New York State law mandates busing students who live within a certain distance from their respective schools. However, the Roslyn District buses any and all students who desire such transportation.

The rumor claims that the referendum would return district busing policy back to the pre-Long Island Expressway expansion boundaries, an area which falls under state-mandated busing policy.