Story by Steve Fiorentine:
The West Hempstead Board of Education adopted the budget for the 2013-14 school year at its monthly business meeting Tuesday night at West Hempstead High School.
The budget-to-budget increase for the approximate $55.6 million budget is 0.88 percent. Superintendent John Hogan also said that the district is at its tax cap limit of 3.55 percent.
“I always want to share with everybody that what has been portrayed as a 2 percent tax cap is, in fact, a misnomer,” Hogan said. “I don’t know if there is any school district in Nassau County, never mind Suffolk or even throughout the state, that actually is at 2 percent.”
“You are allowed to build back in, as I like to put it, certain expenses whether they be capital projects or those sorts of things that allow us to go out a little bit above 2 percent,” he added.
Hogan went into detail about how the budget would affect the district’s staffing. The budget includes the restoration of two secondary teaching positions and one elementary teaching position.
The budget also increases the reading teacher at Chestnut Street School from a part-time job into a full-time position, while blending the CPSE chair and part-time psychologist positions into one full-time position to pair with the psychologist they already have. By doing this, the district will save around $50,000.
A special education teacher for the district’s Rising Stars Program for autistic students will be included in the budget. West Hempstead will be returning four special education students in kindergarten and first grade.
“We are very excited about bringing these little ones back,” Hogan said. “They are our students. They are our children. They belong in our district and we believe that we can provide a quality program here in West Hempstead.”
Capital expenditures of $400,000 are in the budget to perform roofing and masonry work on West Hempstead High School. In the event that any money is leftover from these projects, the surplus will be used to fund improvement projects throughout the school district.
“These buildings are worth a substantial amount of money,” Hogan said. “They are, in many ways, the largest investment our community members have here in West Hempstead, so we have an obligation to make sure that we maintain our facilities as we move forward.”
The budget vote will take place on May 21 from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. in the West Hempstead Middle School gymnasium.
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