Huntington district adopts $109M budget

Huntington school officials adopted a revised budget Monday night that restores several cuts made to programs such as Saturday Academy and some staff positions slashed in an earlier version of the budget, but keeps several proposed reductions to key programs like full-day kindergarten.

The $109,037,301 budget for 2011-12 comes with a 3.15 percent property tax increase and is a 0.23 percent increase over the current budget.

Last week, the board and administration said it was reconsidering the district's proposed 3.5 percent property-tax increase -- with its cuts to student programs and teaching jobs -- because it was getting more state aid than expected.

The district is getting $544,476 more than the $10,373,538 originally proposed for the district by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

The board had been considering a draft budget of $108,732,301 for the 2011-12 school year. That proposal called for the elimination of 102.6 positions including 35.1 elementary staff members, nine secondary staffers, which includes reading teachers and 58.5 noninstructional staffers such as aides.

The adopted budget restores Saturday Academy, eight kindergarten aides, and one psychologist. It also allows for the purchase of 32 notebook computers for the district's primary schools.

One of four contingency positions that had been in the budget was dropped.

But the district decided to implement half-day kindergarten instead of full-day, cut the boys varsity volleyball team, and only partially fund the high school marching band.

School board president Bill Dwyer has said it would be difficult to come up with a budget to make everyone happy because the state has cut off revenue sources without giving back tools to decrease expenses.

He opened the meeting Monday night saying the budget the board was presenting to the public "stinks" because of all the cuts. He said district officials made an offer to the teachers union that would save "substantial" jobs, but so far the union has not accepted the offer.

The public votes on the budget May 17.