East Williston’s Board of Education heard presentations from the district’s elementary, middle, and high school principals on each school’s proposed budget Wednesday night, March 19.
The three schools’ budget proposals fit into the projected districtwide budget of $72,451,803, a number 1.79% more than last year’s $71,177,806 budget, which the district presented at its first budget meeting earlier in March. The district proposed a 2.45% tax levy increase to fund the budget, a raise equal to the district’s tax cap for the year.
The Wheatley High School presented a $14,526,754 budget proposal, a 3.27% increase from last year, Willets Road Middle School presented a proposed budget of $7,656,243, down 3.15% from last year, and North Side Elementary School presented a $9,184,114 budget proposal, up 0.49% from last year.
The three principals said the budgets they each presented accounted for the instruction, staffing, support services, capital projects, equipment, field trips, and teacher salaries at their respective schools.
Wheatley School Principal Wayne Jensen said the high school’s budget would allow for the continuation of all current course offerings and programs. He said two of the high schools’ main budget drivers were the industrial technology department, which includes robotics team and wood shop expenses, and its driver’s education program, though he emphasized that the program was fund neutral and its expense simply had to be shown in the budget for accounting purposes.
Other notable items in the high school budget include three additional extracurricular advisers to expand offerings, refurnishing of student spaces, introducing an Indigenous Peoples program, and increased funding to support research competitions.
Willets Road Principal Christine Dragone said the middle school’s budget would maintain the school’s extracurricular activities, support professional development and instruction, allow for more field trips, and continue to implement responsive classroom and restorative practices, programs that support students’ mental health and social emotional learning.
Due to decreased enrollment, Dragone said the school proposes to only have five fifth-grade classes and teachers instead of its current six, have eight instead of nine full-time special education teachers, move from having the equivalent of 2.4 two full-time teachers in its world language department to two, and reduce the current level of 1.2 full-time English as a new language teachers to one.
This year the middle school has 131 fifth-grade students and projects a decrease of 23 students to 113 for next year, Dragone said. It projects a total enrollment of 363 for next year, down from its current 375.
North Side Elementary Principal Jamie Pandolf said main drivers of the elementary school’s proposed budget include purchases of collaborative flexible furniture that support student learning and its mathematics department, and the purchase of new books for the foreign language department.
Pandolf said the elementary school proposes to decrease its teaching assistant staff by one, moving from 18 to 17 and decreasing its general education teaching staff from 24 to 23.
Residents can attend the district’s upcoming budget hearing April 7 for more information. The budget election will take place from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. May 20, in the Wheatley School Gymnasium on Election Day.
