Cardillo eyes cap-busting school budget

Bill San Antonio

The Manhasset school district announced a $91,083,573 preliminary budget at its March 4 work session, a 4.61 percent budget-to-budget increase and 8.78 percent tax levy increase from last year’s budget. 

Mineola Superintendent of Schools Charles Cardillo said the preliminary numbers maintain a consistent five-year budget-to-budget increase of 2.53 percent and an average tax levy increase of 3.11 percent.

But, Cardillo said, the school district will have a difficult time maintaining its “4 A’s” – of academics, athletics, activities and the arts – without exceeding the state mandated tax cap as a result of problems beyond its control.

Included in those issues, he said, were the loss of state aid and the inability to allocate reserve funds toward this year’s budget.

“The issues that we’re going to be dealing with in 2013-14 and perhaps 2014-15 are external issues,” Cardillo said. “They’re not created by mismanagement, they’re not created by inappropriate fiscal planning. They’re created by the fact that these external factors are coming at one time and put our district at risk.”

The district would need a 60 percent supermajority vote on May 21 to pass the budget that exceed the state-mandated tax cap.

If a supermajority vote is not reached, nor at a second vote weeks later, the district would be forced to cut $6,832,380 from the preliminary budget to reflect the previous year’s tax levy, resulting in a contingent budget of $85,362,624, which is $1,706,800 less than the 2012-13 budget.

“It’s not like there’s something this year that someone could grab onto and say, there is really something you could do here that would reduce it significantly,” Cardillo said. “We understand people want that levy number to come down, but you’ve got to remember that we don’t have the reserves that we’ve had the last four years to really do that.”

Manhasset schools began a self-imposed tax cap of .45 percent in 2009-10, three years before a tax levy was implemented statewide. During the four years since, Manhasset’s budget increases had an average levy increase of 1.61 percent, lower than the 2.90 Nassau average.

To offset tax levy increases, Manhasset used $8,403,859 in reserves and fund balances over the last four years, but Cardillo said the district no longer has any reserve funds available and the working budget reflects no money toward reserves and fund balances as a means of tax levy relief.

The district’s 2.02 budget-to-budget increase was also lower than Nassau’s 2.32 average increase during that four-year period, at a time when Manhasset schools saw an 8.15 percent increase in overall enrollment. During that same  period overall Nassau enrollment dropped 2.36 percent. 

“The issue is really more of the grade level,” Cardillo said. “If you have a surge in the third grade, that’s increased enrollment. If you have course tallies that take you to a situation where you have 64 students, are you running it with two sections and 32 in a class or do you break it up into three?”

Cardillo said that to balance the increase in enrollment, which took place primarily within the kindergarten, first, third and fifth grade levels at Shelter Rock Elementary School, the district this year added a class to each affected grade level.

“If we drop one section, you don’t just add one student [to the other sections], you add four or five students,” Cardillo said.

Cardillo said that the majority of Manhasset residents recently polled using clickers to track their responses supported traditional class sizes for elementary students.

“We have a strong belief system that says there’s something compelling at the younger grade levels about smaller class sizes,” Cardillo said.

The projected budget accounts for an increase in the number of classes per grade level at Shelter Rock and Munsey Park Elementary, and reflects a higher number of students per class as a result.

Cardillo said, however, that if the super majority is not reached, cutting the extra section across each K-6 grade level at both schools would still only yield approximately $1.4 million.

“It would really be just a small part of a major reduction typically done by a low-wealth, low-performing district as opposed to a high-wealth, high-performing district like this one,” Cardillo said.

Districtwide, the staff additions to regular education for the 2013-14 school year account for a $312,059 increase.

Cardillo said those additions include shifting an ESL teacher from the Secondary School back to Shelter Rock to accommodate increased enrollment in the program, as well as the additions of teacher’s assistants and specialty teachers, like a science teacher within the research department, to fill the growing number of students taking the classes.

The majority of the district’s budget-to-budget increase comes from a $2,969,112 state-mandated increase in benefits to teachers and employees.

Cardillo said contributions to the teachers retirement system, currently at 16.25 percent, represents a 262 percent increase since 2009-10. Contributions to the employee retirement system, currently at 20.90 percent, have increased 299 percent during that time.

Cardillo also announced that $398,073 of the budget would go toward the transportation of special education students traveling to Boces and other private educators as well as to account for the rising costs for students to attend those schools.

Deputy Superintendent of Business and Finance Rosemary Johnson said the recent sequester’s impact on the state trickled down to Manhasset, resulting in an incremental reduction of $45,000 in state aid.

Johnson said the district would not know whether Nassau County would divide individual tax percentages until after determining the town’s averaged assessed value in mid-April.

The district has already begun considering programs to cut, such as niche electives like Mandarin.

 “I think we’ve done the right thing by making us lose weight by getting rid of it, but it’s really sad that economic circumstances are forcing us to make what we feel are not appropriate educational decisions for our students,” member Regina Rule said.

While some residents have suggested cutting down on aspects of the athletics budget, such as the amount of money toward game supervision or condensing the transportation of two teams traveling to the same school for games, the consensus was that such cuts would not make a tremendous impact on the budget overall.

“We’re going to go back and look at all these little things and it might save $47,000,” board President Carlo Prinzo said. “I don’t think that’s going to pass the budget. Put it all together and you’re not getting a big number, that’s my issue.”

Another suggestion made from Manhasset residents was to cut certain athletic programs that do not garner much participation, but Trustee Craig Anderson said he does not want to eliminate a sport that does not have a club team alternative in the community.

“If we really were to take a brush to our athletic program, it’s really interesting to me how many of these sports are not year-round activities,” Anderson said. “So a kid that plays baseball or lacrosse or golf in the spring is now doing that on club teams all year long. If you’re going to brush things away, should they be things that don’t have club options? That’s a real opportunity for a kid to participate where he might not be able to otherwise.”

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