Rockville Centre school district fills $1 million budget hole

With only some cuts, the Rockville Centre School District managed to close a nearly $1 million hole in its proposed 2016-17 budget.

At a meeting on March 22, Superintendent Dr. William Johnson and Robert Bartels, assistant superintendent of business, announced increased revenue projections and various steps the district had taken to help close the gap.

Thanks to a rate of inflation that hovers near zero and constrains the tax cap, the district was limited to an initial tax levy increase of $725,436. But because costs — mainly employee salaries and benefits — have continued to rise, the district was left with a budgetary hole that couldn’t be filled by increasing taxes.

“We’ve never had a tax cap as low as we have, we’ve never lived through a situation the way we are, and I don’t want to do anything to damage the programs we have in the school district,” Johnson said. “I don’t want to start taking away from services we provide for our kids.”

At the previous meeting, on March 9, at Johnson’s suggestion, the board put off discussion of budget cuts, because some details of the district’s revenue were still being worked out. Those details, along with some cuts, helped balance the spending plan.

The first change came not from the district, but from Nassau County. Johnson said that since the last board meeting, the county had given school districts their official tax cap numbers, and Rockville Centre’s was higher than first thought. The tax levy cap is now .85 percent, up from .79 percent. This hiked the district’s allowable tax increase by about $57,000.

To help balance the budget, the district is also cutting $50,000 each from the special services budget — which oversees special education — and the curriculum and instruction budget. Those cuts won’t affect students.