According to Newsday, Port Washington is one of the few, and possibly the only, Nassau school district planning to break the tax cap. There are a number of reasons I believe this is not at all necessary.
First, our tax cap of 0.85 percent allows a tax increase of $1,100,000.
In addition to this $1.1 million in additional taxes, state aid will likely increase by about $650,000.
We won’t know for sure until the state budget is complete. We have four announced teacher retirements, to be replaced by new teachers with salary and benefit costs that are about $65,000 lower per teacher, for a savings of $260,000. Finally, our pension costs are going down by $1,600,000.
So, our school district has about $3,600,000 more to spend next year while we still come in under the cap.
We (the Port Washington Educational Assembly) have endorsed the last four school budgets, and we’d like to endorse this one.
But we cannot if Port proposes breaking the tax cap.
In addition to the higher tax levy, we’d also lose the tax rebate checks as a penalty for exceeding the cap.
Numerous studies show class size can be very important in elementary school grades — K-3 especially.
In higher grades, particularly high school, class size is not nearly as important.
We may indeed have a need for more teachers where enrollment is growing.
But Schreiber today has about 250 classes with 19 or fewer students/class.
Of these, 120 include special needs classes (AIS, ESL, et al) which I would not suggest changing.
But there are 130 regular classes where we could consider some degree of consolidation.
If we consolidate just 25 of these 130 classes with other classes, we’d have five teaching positions to use elsewhere.
Our school district passed a $70 million bond last year in a questionable manner. They did not lie, but they also did not tell the voters the full actual cost increase per average home resulting from this bond.
If the proposed budget breaks the tax cap, we will be holding a public forum at the Port Library on Wednesday, May 4 at 7 p.m., where we will discuss many of these issues more fully with the community, and we will invite a school board member to participate as well to present their side.
If interested in getting on our PWEA mailing list, send your name and address to PWEA, P.O. Box 203, Port Washington.
Frank J. Russo Jr.
President, Port Washington Educational Assembly
