Merrick School Board Adopts $41 Million Budget

The Merrick School District will send a $41 million school budget to residents for a vote next month. 

The Board of Education adopted the budget, a 3.4 percent spending increase over the current year, by a vote of 6-1 Tuesday night.

"It's a pretty fair budget," Superintendent Ranier Melucci said.  "We are not cutting one single staff member…the board has been extremely supportive in putting forth a budget that maintains our schools' programs."

School officials had trimmed the budget down to a 3 percent increase, but they were required to add $150,000 into the budget to fund a special education mandate, board president Nancy Kaplan said. 

More than one-third ($469,903) of the budget increase is due to contractual raises for the district's 126 teachers. 

Board trustee Sheri Iskenderian said that while she was more comfortable with the 3 percent hike, she was pleased that the proposed spending increase was well below the 4.4 percent jump that Merrick residents approved last year.  

"We've worked very hard on this," Iskenderian said of the budget.  "We have to be fiscally responsible to our district so we don't find ourselves in trouble in the middle of the year." 

As it stands, school officials have plenty to worry about when it comes to state aid.  The state has already missed an April 1 deadline to pass a budget for next year, but if a proposal from Governor David Paterson holds up, state aid to the district will be slashed by more than 10 percent, $545,147, for the 2010/11 school year.

Trustee Butch Yamali was the sole vote against the proposed budget on Tuesday. 

"In these hard economic times where unemployment is at record levels, people are losing their homes and others are faced with making cuts at home in order to afford to stay in Merrick; it's my duty as a school board trustee to work hard to help our residents," Yamali said in an e-mail after the vote. 

But despite his nay vote, Yamali urged residents to approve the budget on May 18 "rather than to possibly disrupt the children's education."

The projected school tax levy increase will not be released until just a week before the budget vote, school officials said, citing the unsettled state aid figures.  Both the North Merrick and the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School districts have already made their tax levy projections public.   

In other school board news:

During the public hearing portion of the meeting, Michelle Goldstein, a Chatterton School parent, lashed out at school officials for what she said was a failure to provide the public with adequate information at board meetings or on the district's website. 

"This is a charade," Goldstein said.  "You are taking a vote before you have provided any information. You are adopting a school budget but there's no information on a brochure or website.  How can you ask people for questions when there's really no information given to the people interested?"

The district provided a line-by-line copy of a first draft budget at a meeting last month, but no details of the final proposal were distributed Tuesday night. 

In a board discussion that lasted more than a half hour, Kaplan said it was the first time in her eight years on the board that anyone in the public had raised the concern.

"I would like to think about it for a minute," Kaplan said, adding that the board would take the matter into consideration.

Trustee Susan Schwartz took issue with some of the language Goldstein used in addressing the board.

"Don't call this a charade; our meetings are never well attended," Schwartz said.  "We don't ask your opinion prior to everything we vote on because we trust that you voted us into office to make those decisions."

The board also presented awards Tuesday night to winners of the PTA Reflections Contest, as well as to all-county music students.