Residents Voice Opinions at Budget Input Session

East Meadow residents came to the in Salisbury to state their opinions about the upcoming school budget on Thursday evening.

This budget input session is one of the first in a series of public discussions that will take place on the issue.

Superintendent Louis DeAngelo began the meeting by explaining that this was a forum for residents to make statements to the Board of Education, not ask questions, pertaining to the budget so that they could take the comments into consideration as they are drafting the final budget.

Several local East Meadow School District residents made public statements about what they believe should be included, changed, amended or considered for the upcoming budget.

“Usually we put up a pretty good budget,” said Helen Meittinis, who works in a kindergarten intervention class at . “They have been keeping it as tight as they can year after year. We are one of the few districts that have not announced that we are losing jobs- we really haven’t lost any jobs and we don’t really plan on losing jobs.”

Meittinis also discussed the role of the central registry in resolving enrollment controversies and suggested that the district hire a part time professional to “tweak the paper work even tighter."

Jeffrey Angelino took to the podium to tell the board that they should think about consolidating school mailings for households with multiple children in the district in order to save some money. Angelino stated that it might not seem like a big cost, but it is something that does add up in the long run.

Former East Meadow Board of Education trustee Barry Rubinstein explained how children in the district are lucky to be educated in East Meadow and that one of the reasons the district is so successful, compared to others, is that they still offer social and emotional development support. He believes that this is imperative to academic growth because the they work together simultaneously.

“A lot of the states are getting rid of the social and emotional part- the academic part is all that they are thinking about,” he said. “The children are going to have to eventually graduate from school and go into the real world. The ones who are being educated in East Meadow are going to do much better because of the social and emotional development.”

After the meeting commenced, people began to discuss their overall views of the budget for the upcoming year.

Fiore Federico, who has put three children through the East Meadow School District and has lived in town since 1965, said that he thought the district should be more transparent about how much the taxes will be for the following year a few months before the actual budget vote.

“Truthfully, the numbers that they tell you now are a waste of time,” he said. “If they cannot tell you exactly how much your taxes are going to be increased at the time that they are setting their budget –not having to wait five months go by and all of the sudden you open your tax bill and it is completely different than what they are saying.”

Another hop topic was the widely debated was the reserve budget. East Meadow currently has approximately $17 million in reserve funds, one of the largest amounts in the area.

“The reserves shouldn’t have been there,” Federico said. “I could see keeping $200,000 or $300,000 for a rainy day- need a new roof for the school. But, all of this time, we shouldn’t have had to put that much reserve in.”

Meittinis believes that the large reserve funds were a good thing to have. Though the money could be gone in two years because of the state funding cuts, she explained that East Meadow would be in far better shape than other districts. She believes that this reserve money will help the district stay ahead in the short run, but they have to spend conservatively.

“It took over 30 years to pile up though- nobody realizes that,” she continued. “To watch this get run on a day to day basis and see what they do and accomplish is amazing. They get it done and put the kids as number one.”