‘Budget café’ process seeks to balance W.H. spending

Like many school districts in Nassau County, West Hempstead is in fiscal trouble.

When Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced his proposed state budget two weeks ago, West Hempstead schools got a “big shock,” as Deputy Superintendent Richard Cunningham characterized a cut of more than $311,000 in state aid for 2013-14, a drop of 4.02 percent from the current year.

What will that mean for district students? According to preliminary proposals, it might mean cutting a teaching position at both the high school and middle school, increasing class sizes in the elementary schools, reducing some extracurricular activities and perhaps even closing the Chestnut Street School, district officials said.

Last week, Superintendent John Hogan hosted his second “budget café” at the Howard T. Herber Middle School cafeteria, where residents and school administration worked on next year’s budget. Cunningham said that the district would feel the impact of the decision by BOCES to vacate the Eagle Avenue School, a district building that it had been utilizing and paying for, as well as a large increase in the number of students from Island Park who have opted to attend Long Beach High School rather than West Hempstead High, cutting a former revenue stream nearly in half.

In addition, Cunningham said, the allowable tax levy limit, the so-called “cap,” continues to be refined and is still based on incomplete data. “As of today,” he said on Feb. 6, “the allowable levy limit is 2.18 percent, or an increase of $892,199 over the current budget.” All told, the district was looking at a budgetary shortfall of more than $2.25 million, Cunningham said.

He pointed to several major items that cannot be cut, and so will be roadblocks to reducing the deficit. The mandated increase in retirement costs, for example, amounts to nearly $2 million, and salary increases add up to another $566,000.

Mandated health costs, Cunningham added, are also on the rise.

He said he hopes that local political leaders will be able to moderate the state aid cuts ordered by Cuomo, especially in the critical high tax category, but he is planning to complete a “rationale budget that addresses our education philosophy” in any case.

At the budget café, district administrative staff made a series of recommendations to cut the deficit, which will be vetted during the budget process. They include reducing the number of periods in the school day from nine to eight, restructuring administrative duties, changing the way clerical and custodial services are provided, reducing transportation fees, reducing attorney fees and leasing computer equipment rather than purchasing it.

Cunningham said that the middle school cafeteria was jammed for the cafe, and that residents were broken up into 20 groups of five to eight people, who worked to “answer some essential questions” about what they wanted for their community’s educational process and what they would do to make up the budget shortfall.

The majority of the groups, he said, were more interested in talking about revenue generators than where the budget could be cut. Their recommendations included charging for in-school and after-school programs such as sports, music and tutorial time, and borrowing money to cover operating costs — neither of which, district administrators pointed out, would be legal.

The next budget café get-together is scheduled for Feb. 26, again in the middle school cafeteria, while the next official budget meeting is set for March 5.