Riverhead school board approves $201.4 million budget, dual language program partially restored

The Riverhead Board of Education voted unanimously last night to approve a $201.4 million budget for next school year, submitting to district voters a proposal that raises the tax levy to the cap and includes some controversial spending cuts to district voters for approval. 

The proposal for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, which starts July 1, would increase expenditures by $9.4 million, or roughly 5%, over the district’s current budget. The most significant cost increases in the budget come from what the district will need to pay in employee benefits and health insurance, and what it will need to pay for instruction, according to proposals by the district’s interim assistant superintendent of business, Marianne Cartisano. 

The budget requires raising the school district’s current tax levy by 3.34% — the maximum allowable under the school district’s tax levy cap — to generate an additional $3.48 million. In addition to the increased revenue from property taxes, the school district will use an additional $2.68 million from reserve funds (totaling $6.8 million) and an additional $3.67 from state aid (totaling $80.87 million) to fund the rest of its expenditures. 

MORE COVERAGE: Riverhead school district proposes $9.4 million budget increase, requiring 3.3% tax levy hike

The plan calls for eliminating 56.8 full-time equivalent faculty and staff positions through layoffs and attrition, and cutting certain programs and classes if they don’t meet certain enrollment requirements. The cuts come as the district approaches what Cartisano called a “fiscal cliff” with the loss of nearly $20 million in temporary federal coronavirus funding it has received over the past three years. 

The school board will hold a public hearing on the budget at its May 14 meeting. District voters will go to the polls May 21 to decide whether to approve the board’s proposed budget and to elect two school board members. The vote will take place between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. at the school district’s elementary schools.

In a change of plans, Cartisano announced last night that the district’s staffing plan had been adjusted to maintain the school district’s elementary dual language program in all four of its elementary schools for incoming first-graders. The partial restoration of the program follows heavy backlash from parents, who chastised the district for cutting a unique program it had expanded after just one year.

School district administrators had proposed consolidating its dual language program in the four elementary schools to just one site, Phillips Avenue Elementary School, and determining enrollment based on a lottery system. Cartisano said the cuts were required because the district needed to layoff its least senior faculty members, and it would not have enough teachers certified to continue the dual language program at its current scale next school year.

Cartisano said the district will not be offering the program to incoming kindergarteners in the three elementary schools other than Phillips Avenue, and there is no promise the program will be available to the cohort in the 2025-26 school year.

“There was a large contingency of parents who asked us for this to be the solution to at least give their children the opportunity for one more year, because this decision came, so they felt, abruptly,” Cartisano said.

Although Cartisano said she “doesn’t expect the budget to fail,” she discussed at the school board’s request the options if the budget was rejected by school district voters. The board could either put a modified budget proposal up for a vote, adopt a contingency budget with no tax increase, or put the same budget up for a revote, she said.

Cartisano said should the budget fail to pass, she recommends the board put up the same budget for a revote in June.

“I have given you the best financial plan you can for this budget,” Cartisano said. “I am not holding any secret trick to play in June. I don’t put a budget on sale three weeks from now. This is the best financial plan you can offer your community. So I don’t see any reason to adjust it.”

“And again, I don’t see any reason to change your instructional plan,” she added. “We have done the best we can with very, very difficult circumstances from your financial perspective.”

A contingency budget with no tax increases would require the district to cut $3.4 million from its proposal. By law, the school district would have to eliminate its budget for maintaining buildings and its budget for purchasing new equipment, Cartisano said. The district would also have to eliminate a combined $1.2 million dollars in costs associated with student programs and administrators.

“This will devastate your community and it will affect student programs that I will tell you will take you years to recover from,” she said.

The last time the school district operated on a contingency budget was in 2020, when a budget proposed to voters twice failed to pass. The school district is still feeling the effects of that budget today, Cartisano said. 

Kiara Chabla Sarmiento, a graduating Riverhead High School senior, said the unique academic and extracurricular programs Riverhead has set her apart when applying to colleges, and allowed her to get a full scholarship to Boston University. A member of the freshman class during the year under the contingency budget, she said she experienced firsthand how important those programs are to the school.

“I think we should keep the programs around, guys. It’s really important,” wow said. “The programs that I have received throughout my years in this school, including the dual language program I had throughout Phillips Avenue, is so important. That’s how I learned English and I wouldn’t be where I am today without it.”

But not everyone was satisfied with the final proposal. 

“After all the pressure and antics from the dual language parents, it seems you gave them what they wanted and they got to keep it. What about our [teacher assistants]? They’re still getting cut,” Amanda Golz of Aquebogue said. “That means little baby kindergarteners won’t have [teacher assistants]. Where’s the money to move around for them?”

While the state budget is not yet finalized, the school board had to vote without the confirmed amount the district will receive in state aid. Cartisano has budgeted the district to receive $500,000 more than in the governor’s budget proposal, which she said is a safe estimate of how much more the district could receive with cuts from the governor’s budget restored. Gov. Kathy Hochul announced on Monday that she had reached a “conceptual agreement” with state legislative leaders on key priorities in the 2025 state budget that includes putting off proposed changes to the state aid funding formula.