School Board Adopts $184.53M Budget Proposal

The Three Village Board of Education on Wednesday voted unanimously to adopt a budget of $184,526,960 to present to the community for a vote on May 21.

The proposed budget stays within the state-mandated cap on tax levy increases – which for Three Village was 4.05 percent this year – and will need a simple majority to pass.

The year-over-year budget represents a 3.97 percent spending increase. Homeowners would see an average tax increase of $396.

“It’s a fiscally sound budget,” Dr. Jeff Kerman, school board president, said after the meeting. “We’ve done a lot of research on this and have really worked very, very hard to lessen the impact on our students as much as possible and our staff as much as possible.”

Facing steep increases in state-mandated retirement system contributions, health insurance, and salary costs this year, school administrators turned to staff cuts to close a budget gap as high as $8.1 million. The district also benefited from receiving more than $900,000 in state aid than originally anticipated.

The final iteration of the budget will see a total of 58.3 full-time teaching positions eliminated – rather than the initial “worst case scenario” of 81 teacher layoffs that administrators initially thought could happen – along with two administrative positions and a handful of other positions for a total of 67.3 full-time staff position cuts. Elementary school class sizes will be slightly larger but still within contractually approved ranges. The budget also includes a restructuring of the theater arts and student government programs into after-school activities rather than classes during the school day at each secondary school.

Also included in the cuts is the elimination of another program beloved by the students: American Sign Language. Trustee Susanne Mendelson made a last-minute pitch to preserve the American Sign Language program as it currently exists within the district’s foreign language program. She made a motion to extract another $150,000 from reserve funds to restore the 1.5 full-time equivalent teaching positions that would be needed to keep the ASL program in place.

“This isn’t about choosing one over the other,” she said. “It’s looking at our community as a whole, it’s looking at diversity.”

However, the motion was defeated by a vote of 5-2.

“We are hindered by the tax cap and the current laws. ... These are programs that we would love to keep, but we can’t,” Kerman said after the meeting.

Superintendent Cheryl Pedisich said the decision to cut ASL was one of the most difficult decisions the district had to make this year.

“The value of that program is immense for a very diversified population of students and my hope is that at some point it will be restored,” she said. “But there are seniority rules that just do not allow us to do that at this time.”

Pedisich said the district’s next steps include making presentations to the various PTA and community groups to discuss the budget. Overall, she said the budget preserves the core programs that help make Three Village the school district it is today.

“I think we’ve made some significant, difficult and, as I said, heartwrenching cuts to our programs,” Pedisich said. “We’ve tried to keep as much in place that we possibly could so that our students are being given a quality education.”