Commack BOE "in-action"

The FY 2015-16 External Audit Report for the Commack School District (CUFSD) is available on the district’s web site. Related comments follow:

In FY2015-16, actual expenditures were $184.9M compared to the (adopted) budget of $185.1M so that actual expenses exceeded the budget by $216.7K. There has been a long string of years where the budget regularly exceeded actual expenses by more than $5M This was one of the criticisms of the recent NYS Comptroller’s Audit. I doubt that this represents a change in district “philosophy”; more likely, it is just a random event. Time will tell.

The FY2015-16 budget for revenues was $176.2M while actual revenues were $183.8M so that actual revenues exceeded the revenue budget by $7.5M. A large part of the extra revenue was due to the cash surrender value of an insurance policy associated with a local retirement incentive; the difference between cash surrender value and repurchase resulted in a gain of about $2.3M. Why there wasn’t any disclosure of this item at a BOE meeting is a mystery – but modus operandi for this BOE.. .

Actual expenses of $184.9M exceeded the actual revenues of $183.8M resulting in an operating deficit of $1.15M. This is the third consecutive year that the district has incurred an operating deficit. The district choose to pay this deficit from the unassigned Fund Balance rather than the appropriated Fund Balance. This choice dropped the unassigned Fund Balance to 2.2% of the 2016-17 budget and guarantees that the NYS Comptroller will declare the district to be in fiscal stress. In actuality this is not the case since the sum of appropriated and unassigned Fund Balances totals 6.96% of the 2016-17 budget (required by law to be less than 4%). Why the BOE wants to the district to be declared in fiscal stress is anyone’s guess.

In their closing letter, the external auditors note that they reported certain other matters to the BOE in a separate letter. This circumvents the requirement to publish the auditor’s report. The same occurred last year. The residents have never been informed about the contents of that letter.

Comments on a few other items follow:

The agenda for the October 20, 2016 BOE meeting erroneously states that the school property tax rate in Huntington for FY2015-16 was 256.64/100. In fact, the actual tax rate was 257.539 (refer to rate schedule for FY2015-16 on the Huntington web site). The total taxable market value of property in Commack is about $6B. Smithtown-Commack residents pay about 60% of the tax levy (so Huntington-Commack residents pay about 40%). Taxable assessed valuation for Commack residents in Huntington and Smithtown, as shown on the CUFSD web site, needs to be updated with the latest information (Sept 2016) from the respective Assessor’s office. Not only is this go without saying, but allows an independent check. It should be noted that individual changes in taxes depend on changes in assessed valuation, STAR, and the equalization rate as well as in changes in the tax levy. Only the latter is covered by the NYS rebate program. Although there are some questions about 2015-16 tax rates , the data shown in the Agenda for the Oct 20, 2016 BOE meeting indicates a FY2016-17 tax rate increase in Huntington-Commack of 2.47% and 0.49% in Smithtown-Commack. The tax levy increase was 0.38%. Further, Basic Star in Huntington-Commack will decrease from 480 to 450 so that a Huntington property assessed at 3400 with Basic STAR will pay an additional $79 due to this change.

Minutes of the Commack BOE meetings fail to meet minimum standards for such documents. Minutes are meant to summarize discussions/events that occurred during the meeting. However, the minutes of the Commack BOE meetings essentially consist of changing the word “Meeting Agenda” to “Minutes of Meeting”. This can be interpreted as confirming that the meetings are primarily symbolic and that little of real interest occurs in public.There is almost no discussion of any significance and a dearth of questions from trustees , regardless of the topic. For example, the BOE trustees approved the External Audit report w/o any questions. This was also the case regarding the Audit Committee report. (The Audit Committee report is not available on the CUFSD web site. Neither are letters received from residents). I could go on, but you get the idea. The BOE has not been meeting its obligations to keep the residents properly informed of matters of interest.

It turns out that this cavalier approach to the minutes as well as the statement regarding (restrictions on) public participation - read at every meeting – closely imitates the Middle Country BOE model.. A much more resident-friendly approach is typified by the procedures used at the Northport BOE meetings.

Among topics which needs discussion is the IB program at Commack Middle School and High School. A Newsday article (Oct 30, 2016), based on data from NYSED, provided information on the AP and IB programs at those LI school districts (99) with public High Schools. This indicated that only 9 (out of 99) districts provided IB programs. In Nassau, 39915 AP tests were given in Spring 2016 compared to 3580 IB tests; the percentage of those passing an AP test was 69.5% while 61.2% of those taking IB tests passed. In Suffolk, there were 29891 AP tests compared to 6057 IB tests. 73.8% of those taking the IB tests passed while passing rate in AP courses was 66%. Justification for the expansive use of IB in the Commack S.D. needs to be revisited with an emphasis on cost effectiveness.

The Districts of Distinction designation is awarded by a somewhat obscure journal called "District Administration". the award is based on an application submitted by Districts who are interested in such an award. Why this is more desirable than the quantitative rankings of US News and World Report, Newsweek, and the Washington Post is apparently in the eyess of the beholder (Commack Administration).