The 2015-16 Garden City School Budget was recently passed with 1,387 residents, or 80 percent of those voting, overwhelmingly approving of its passage, making it one of the highest approval ratings on Long Island. In addition, Proposition II, which authorizes the board of education to establish a capital reserve fund for a probable term of eight years in an ultimate amount of $10 million whose purpose shall be to fund in whole or in part, capital improvements. It passed with 1,290 (81 percent) voter approval. Trustees Robert Martin and Tom Pinou, both who ran unopposed, were elected to serve as community representatives on the board of education for additional three-year terms. The proposed overall budget is $110,158,627 and represents a $751,489 budget to budget increase over the 2014-15 numbers. The projected tax levy increase (with STAR) is .67 percent with the maximum allowable tax levy being .67 percent.
While the district received a paltry amount of state aid ($267,108), which is the biggest source of revenue for the school district other than property taxes and has been steadily decreasing by 11 percent since 2008, belt tightening was found in other measures. Among them were joining purchasing consortium with other districts (transportation, supplies, insurance, etc.), controlling overtime, seeking and obtaining teacher mini-grants, preventative maintenance for school facilities and the recycling of technology hardware within the district. Part of the reason behind the budget having a relatively minimal increase over last year’s numbers would be the single digit upticks in categories like equipment, personnel services and textbook expenditures. The highest increase came with tuition, which saw a 15.34 increase over the 2014-15 budget with an increase of $281,669 to go from $1,835,855 to $2,117,524. But on the flipside, debt service went down 18.65 percent from $7,042,391 to $5,728,903 and employee benefit costs also decreased from $29,408,901 to $27,844,464 for a 5.32 percent decrease.
Proposition II’s passage may have come about due to the fact that there is no additional cost to taxpayers. Its funding comes about through a combination of budget efficiencies, unanticipated revenues and excess reserves. More than half the needed funds are stranded in the district’s Employee Benefit Accrued Liability Reserve (EBALR) and is the result of compliance with the requirements imposed by the Government Accounting Standards Board Statement 45 (GASB-45 which was issued in June 2004). The fund will be used to invest in the district’s infrastructure that will touch all nine buildings and includes roofing, masonry work, windows, lighting, security enhancements, synthetic field and track, site-work and HVAC.
Passage of the school budget occurred just as Garden City High School was ranked first on Long Island, third in New York State and ranked 90th of all high school in the nation by U.S. News & World Report’s recently released annual “Best American High Schools” rankings.
