The Great Neck School Board of Education unveiled a $216,441,071 preliminary budget for the 2015-2016 year Monday, a 1.11 percent increase over the previous year’s $214 million budget.
Board Vice President Larry Gross said the school district has maintained all its programs with no significant change despite an increase in the tax levy that is one of the lowest the school district has seen in years.
“These are exceptionally difficult times for education in New York State,” Gross said. “Great Neck was able to keep its fiscal house in order.”
School district Assistant Superintendent for Business John Powell said the district’s efforts to keep costs down was aided by a reduction in the amount the district must pay into the teacher’s retirement system of the employees retirement system.
According to the preliminary budget, the school district expects to pay $3,947,310 into the employee’s retirement system – $259,908 less than in the 2014-2015 budget – and $13,202,107 into the teachers retirement system – $3,483,690 less than in the previous budget.
Powell said when Wall Street retirement portfolios do well, the school districts don’t have to pay as much into the retirement systems. The contribution rate for the teachers retirement system went from 17.53 percent top 13.26 percent, and the rate for the employees retirement system dropped from 20.1 percent to 18.2 percent.
“There’s an inverse relationship to how well Wall Street does to how much we have to pay into the systems,” he said.
Powell said one of the largest increases proposed for the budget is the $3.4 million for increased salaries and new teachers.
Powell said Common Core class size and special education requirements compelled the school district to add 23.5 new teachers, the half coming from a part-time teacher.
He said 13 of the new teachers were hired last year, but they had not been accounted for in the 2014-2015 budget. He said 10 additional teachers were hired this year, and were also added to this year’s proposed budget.
The amount the district has to pay for bussing students is also planned to drive up budget expenditures, Powell said. The school district will have to pay about $10.2 million to bus its students, $357,656 more than the district did last year, Powell said.
“We contract out our transportation, and each year our contract with the outside companies goes up by the consumer price index,” Powell said. “We take on additional routes as new kids move into the school district.”
Health insurance for district employees was also budgeted to increase for the 2015-2016 year by about 5 percent, or $1,034,815. The budget projects the district would have to pay about $19.5 million for health insurance, according to Powell.
Powell said the state issues a health insurance plan that reflects the rising cost of health care, and that the cost for health insurance goes up every year.
Property taxes still account for the majority of the school district’s revenue, Powell said, which accounts for 92.17 percent of the proposed budget.
But the school district also receives a significant sum of money from schools outside the Great Neck School District who send their kids to Great Neck schools, Powell said. About $1.3 million is projected in the preliminary budget to be earned in 2015-2016 – about $300,000 more than the district budgeted for last year, Powell said.
The school district will typically get about $2 million from these programs, but Powell said he only budgeted for $1.3 million because he does not have a final list of students who would be coming from out of the district, and did not want to over budget.
Powell said other school districts will send their students to Great Neck if that school district cannot provide a certain service, such as special education, speech therapy or occupational therapy.
“Other schools will send their students here because there are services they can’t provide,” Powell said. “They may not be able to hire one teacher for a student’s needs, so they send them here where we can provide the service at a significant reduction in cost.”
