This story was updated on April 10 at 12:44 p.m.
The Malverne Board of Education presented its proposal for the 2013-14 school budget at its meeting Tuesday night at Malverne High School.
The board adopted a 2013-14 budget of $51,244,209, a difference of $2,646,442 from last year's budget.
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The levy-to-levy increase for this year’s budget is 3.66 percent, which happens to be the second lowest increase of the last 15 years for the Malverne School District.
Last year, the district saw its lowest increase ever at 2.44 percent.
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The tax levy itself is actually decreasing from last year because of increases in state aid and fund balance. Taxpayers are only responsible for 78.04 percent of the budget, whereas last year they were responsible for 79.39 percent, according to District Business Administrator Thomas McDaid Jr.
Total aid is increasing by roughly 12 percent in the proposal, assisting with the revenue portion of the budget.
McDaid thanked Sen. Dean Skelos, R-Rockville Centre, and Assemblyman Brian Curran, R-Lynbrook, for their work in bringing back the district’s high tax aid.
State aid as a total is increasing $506,000 in the budget. The budget would be $420,000 shorter if not for the work of Skelos and Curran, according to McDaid.
An additional $577,000 is being brought into the budget through building aid, while BOCES aid is going up $49,000.
The two major areas the budget is going toward are instruction and employee benefits.
Instruction is increasing by $898,000 and employee benefits -- which McDaid described as the “major runner of this budget" -- are increasing by more than $1 million from last year.
The board was glad to report that they only had to make a few faculty cuts, with the only major loss being a position at the elementary level due to enrollment.
“Everyone else around here, probably 85 to 90 percent, will be losing a lot more staff,” McDaid said. “We were able to absorb a lot of the increases in this budget and keep as many of the faculty here as possible.”
While other school districts have lost 5 to 10 percent of their staff over the last two years, Malverne has lost not even half of a person, according to McDaid. He noted that classroom instruction has also increased in that time, while other districts have been forced to cut it.
The board will further discuss the proposed school budget at its May 14 meeting prior to the May 21 vote.
