Huntington School Budget Could Halve Kindergarten

Half-day kindergarten, far fewer class and building assistants and a reduced salary for the next superintendent are among the changes outlined in a draft budget presented by Huntington school district administrators Monday night.

A packed crowd of residents, parents, teachers and others cheered speakers who pleaded for continuation of full-day kindergarten classes. The status of Jack Abrams school, closed to classes this year, also came up.

Many of the cutbacks seemed to fall on younger pupils first. The draft budget outlines a savings of $2,306,587 in salaries on the kindergarten through sixth grade level.

Library services, reading specialists and monitors would all be cut back, as would psychologists. Representatives of those workers took turns speaking on behalf of their colleagues and their programs.

"It's as if we're breaking the foundation" of the schools, board member Kim Brown said.

The draft budget is built on a projected loss of $1.75 million in state aid. Though the budget deal struck by Gov. Cuomo and legislative leaders is expected to restore $272 million to school funding from the original plan to cut $1.5 billion statewide, the Huntington district won't know until Wednesday just how much more it might expect. The district has also lost more than $1 million in federal funds.

The district is planning for a budget of $108,732,301, based on a 3.5 percent tax increase. State aid cuts and increasing costs have led administrators to seek out serious cuts throughout the budget.

Superintendent John Finello, who is retiring at the end of the year, said, "as educators, we are feeling extreme stress." The tough economic climate "means that things have to go. We're looking at services ancillary to the acaedmiic program. In any cases we were building programs even in tough times...We don’t want to cut any of these programs. We understand squarely how important these programs are," he said, but reminded board members that if one program were saved, something else would have to be cut.

One teacher who said he spoke as a parent in the district said, in a bid to head off the planned elimination of teaching positions, that, "If we were a factory producing widgets that would be one thing. But this district isn’t a factory; we don’t make widgets; we teach children.

"I want to know as a resident how cutting over 40 teachers...makes this district better."

Another speaker warned that the amount of money budgeted for legal services was probably too small because the cuts for services for special education services were likely to lead to legal action, and another detailed her salary in a plea to not cut lower-paid monitors.

Assistant superintendent Kenneth Card discussed the merits of full-day vs. half-day kindergarten and said research indicated that while it is clear that students benefit from a full-day program, the content of the programs offered in a half-day class could make a big difference. He drew laughter when he said that "by reducing some of the things such as nap time" and time spent on socialization skills and working  instead more on literacy skills, some losses from a reduced schedule could be mitigated.

"I am not suggesting by any stretch of the imagination that I’m in favor of either program," he said. "Our neighboring school districts, in fact, looked at students outcomes on third grade tests and found no difference in achievement," he said, while acknowledging that there results might always be consistent from district to district.

Some of the cuts include:

Superintendent's salary from the current $266,629 to $200,000.

Elementary teaching staff would lose 27.1 positions; and a total 47.1 instructional jobs lost throughout the district.

Teacher aides reduced by 33.5.

Funding for the marching band reduced

One or more sports teams and an assistant coach

As presented, the  draft reflects a decrease from the current year of  $54,238.

Through 33 pages of facts and figures, the most consistent increase shown in the draft budget came in the area of benefits and retirement rates, the latter determined by state rules. 

The draft budget lists a 33 percent increase in employee retirement costs (non-teachers), 40 percent in the teachers' retirement costs, and a 13 percent increase in insurance.