Rockville Centre BOE warns of staff cuts, class size increases

When school officials unveiled a preliminary 2012-13 spending plan at the first budget workshop on Jan. 31, Board of Education President Liz Dion issued a stark warning: To stay under the state’s new 2 percent tax levy cap, the district will have to cut staff.

In a presentation at South Side High School’s cafeteria that was attended by many Rockville Centre educators, Assistant Superintendent Robert Bartels explained that the new law’s complicated — and not yet finalized — guidelines allow the district to increase its budget by just $1.6 million over the current spending plan of $95.7 million if it is to be passed by a simple majority vote. A proposed budget increase of $3.1 million, or 3.2 percent, would require a 60 percent majority to pass, according to the new legislation. To stay within the allowable increase under the tax cap, the district will need to find additional revenue or cut $1.4 million in spending.

Under the new law, Bartels added, if the proposed plan is defeated twice, the district must adopt a budget with no increase over its current spending plan.

Bartels explained that the major increases are salaries, up $1.8 million; health insurance, up $540,000; employee and teacher retirement contributions, up a combined $400,000; Social Security, up $100,000; and transportation, up by $250,000. The increase in salaries alone exceeds the projected tax levy limit. Contracts can be renegotiated, Schools Superintendent Dr. William Johnson told a questioner at the meeting, only if a union agrees to reopen talks.

Administrators in the district’s seven schools all submitted spending plans that were lower than this year’s, but there were two notable increases: the Phys. Ed., Health and Athletics increase of 5.6 percent included $30,000 for a new boys’ swim team, and a 7.7 percent increase in Curriculum and Instruction included $60,000 for unfunded state mandates — to cover the costs of testing, assessments and training required to implement the state’s new student-test-based teacher evaluation plan, known as the APPR.