by Tracy McCormick-Dishman
The Nassau County School Board confronted significant financial challenges during a July 21 special budget meeting, with Superintendent Dr. Kathy Burns revealing an over $11 million reduction in funding due to family empowerment programs.
“Our fourth calculation, we’ve not received any information on received the total reduction for family empowerment of over $11 million,” Dr. Burns told board members. “All titles 1, 2, 3, 4 and five were frozen.”
The district has responded to the budget crisis by eliminating 53 positions, though Dr. Burns emphasized these were not layoffs of current employees.
“Also, we’ve cut 44 positions. And then six pair of positions and three people at the district office level,” Dr. Burns explained. “These were not people losing jobs that they have currently, these were positions that we either did not feel, or received a resignation, did not feel or as we were reviewing allocations, looking at their current enrollment and making those adjustments.”
The 44 eliminated positions were instructional roles, while six paraprofessional positions and three district office staff positions were also cut. No reductions were made to custodial or maintenance staff.
Board Chairperson Gail Cook clarified the nature of the cuts, asking: “44 instructional, what was the non-instructional?”
“Six pairs and three district staff,” Dr. Burns responded, confirming that custodial and maintenance positions remained untouched.
The budget challenges extend beyond personnel cuts to departmental and school-level reductions. Finance Director Ellen Harper presented a budget control sheet showing percentage reductions across all department budgets and individual school allocations.
“So if you look at the budget control sheet 714 25 dated you will see every school listed that’s fun 110 for their school particular operations or things that they want to do in their school each school has an allocated amount each year we reduced all of those allocations,” Dr. Burns said.
The reductions affect discretionary funds schools use for their individual operations and activities. However, Dr. Burns indicated some restoration might be possible later.
“Currently we may be able to go back and add some at a later time but right now we reduced up those as well as all of our department budgets,” she said.
Despite the extensive cuts, district leadership emphasized their commitment to maintaining educational quality.
“So we’ve made cuts everywhere possible and to be able to continue to function and operate in a manner to maintain our number 1a status,” Dr. Burns stated.
The board also addressed ongoing uncertainty regarding federal funding, with several Title programs remaining in limbo until October when the Department of Education is expected to provide final numbers.
“Actually, Title I is not. Part of Title I is,” Harper said when asked about federal funding delays. “And we don’t know what we’ll receive so Ellen was correct in leaving that blank because like I said they said they talked to us about in October.”
During the meeting, the board approved advertising requirements for the upcoming budget process, including the required local effort millage at 3.043 mills and discretionary millage at 0.748 mills. Cook explained these statutory requirements to new board members and the public.
“This meeting is required by statute that the budget be presented, what Ellen was talking about, for July 1 from the property appraiser … they take in everything that has been done and they send us a projected amount of income that we can expect to receive from the tax roll,” Cook said.
The board scheduled its first public budget hearing for July 28 at 6 p.m. in the boardroom, where Harper will present information on rollback rates and required local effort as mandated by state law.
In the interest of transparency, Cook indicated the budget worksheets would be made available to the public following the meeting.
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