Comsewogue school district's did not get the supermajority it needed to pass. On Tuesday night the budget failed by a vote of 1514 to 1064, not enough to get the 60 percent required, according to school board member Rob DeStefano.
Update: School board member Fran Alabau-Blatter says that the district is recounting the votes. Check back for final results.
At 4.5 percent, the Superintendent's budget proposed to raise the tax levy above the state mandated maximum. To do this, the budget needed to pass by 60 percent of the vote. Ultimately it did not get the votes it needed to pass.
The budget ended up getting 58.7 percent of the residents voting yes, just over 1 percent shy of passing. The difference was 33 votes.
DeStefano said that there was a 25 percent increase in voter turnout over recent years.
The budget was hotly debated over the last few months because it represented a and came after .
During the lead up to the election, Superintendent Joseph Rella tested public sentiment for passing a cap-busting budget. After much debate, Rella ultimately proposed the 4.5 percent plan calling it "educationally sound" in presentations.
According to Assistant Superintendent for Business, Susan Casali, by law the next budget vote will be Jun 19. Casali said that the Board of Education will decide which budget to present. She said that they have already stated at the public meetings they will present the property tax cap level budget of 2.6 percent with $2.9 million needed to be eliminated from the total budget.
If that budget is ultimately defeated and the district is forced to implement a zero percent increase in the tax levy, then it would need to cut $4.4 million from the existing budget.
Voting took place at gymnasium from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
I think a step in the right direction would be eliminating tenure. For every bad teacher in a district earning $150k, there's probably 10 young people serving drinks and waiting for a $40k/year entry level teaching job. Why does a masters get them job security and raises for life when in every other field it means virtually nothing?
Yet, people buy into Newsday's continuous attacks on public pensions and teachers whose effects on the monetary problems of government are minuscule in comparison to the damage done by banks and Wall Street. Thus far not one banker or financier has been incarcerated. And for Matt who assails unions, unions paved the way to the middle class for millions of American workers and pioneered benefits such as paid health care and pensions along the way. Even today, union workers earn significantly more on average than their non-union counterparts, and union employers are more likely to provide benefits. And non-union workers-particularly in highly unionized industries-receive financial benefits from employers who increase wages to match what unions would win in order to avoid unionization. Even if you as a worker are not a union member, it may well be that whatever wage and benefits you earn, they would be far lower if unions did not exist. Regarding John's comment on tenure - tenure is due process. Something this country was founded on.
Also, and Earl this doesn't pertain to your comment, but everyone is aware that in many instances, honors students also play sports. And that even average or poor students that play sports often go on to have fantastic careers, and some even out earn the nerds that everyone believes will be their bosses some day. We're conditioned every day to point fingers rather than make healthy suggestions to resolve problems. I haven't seen anyone bring up the abundance of high density housing in the Comsewogue school district, and the fact that people living in said housing pay roughly 25% of the taxes of a single family home. So all their kids go to school for 75% off. Not that you can kick these kids out of the district, but if you're looking for roots of the problem, there's one.
I live here and I don't drink coffee. I live in a house myself that I can barely afford to pay for. I work for a fortune 500 company and make a decent salary. The $300 or so dollars I would have to pay extra this year is simply not available for me. I believe your kids and the other students of the community do deserve a good education, but at what cost? Would you like to have myself, and others like me have our houses fall into disrepair and get foreclosed upon simply because we could not afford to pay our skyrocketing taxes? Would you prefer more houses with 15 tenants living in them? I paid just under 9k a year for taxes, and to ask me to pay another $300 is simply not fair. The reform has to start somewhere, and it needs to start with a community that stands up and tells the administration enough is enough.