Politics & Government

Farmingdale District Lobbies in Albany

Legislative Action Committee brought proposals to representatives.

Mandate relief, and several other legislative proposals were the central issues brought by the up to Albany on their last week.

The , along with members of the Board of Education, the administration, the PTA, teachers and students, met with state senators Charles Fuschillo, Carl Marcellino and Kemp Hannon, and state assemblymen Robert Sweeney, Joseph Saladino, James Conte, Fred Thiele, Steven Englebright and Harvey Weisenberg. In addition, the committee met with officials in the majority finance’s and state comptroller’s offices.

"I don't foresee the state running to our rescue," said school board member , who chairs the Legislative Action Committee, at the February Board of Education meeting. "We're going to have to continue to pressure them to get them to understand exactly what they are doing to us."

Find out what's happening in Farmingdalewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Capobianco said state representatives made clear that the New York State pension system took a big hit in revenue and that districts are going to see continued pension contribution increases until they get the fund back up. He also said the committee addressed other smaller-scale issues facing the district with representatives, like a future paper ballot mandate.

"This is the last year of the lever machines and going forward we are going to print paper ballots," Capobianco said. "According to the Help America Vote Act, we're going to have to print ballots for 150 percent of registered voters, when only eight percent show up. I said we should just print 150 percent of last year's turnout."

Find out what's happening in Farmingdalewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Each year, the group brings several students to meet the legislators and learn about the legislative process.

"They were phenomenal," said school board member .

Superintendent John Lorentz said that the annual trip is important for the district to communicate with the legislators and hear their views on the direction of the state.

“The trip to Albany was a tremendous opportunity for everybody involved, especially our student representatives,” he said.

The proposals the Legislative Action Committee made in Albany included:

  • The state must recognize regional cost differences to ensure that dollars allocated to Long Island schools have the same buying power as dollars allocated to schools in other regions of the state.
  • Districts should be granted the opportunity to establish a Teacher Retirement System (TRS) reserve and support a minimum contribution to the retirement system to smooth out spiking rates.
  • School construction projects should be exempt from the Wicks Law, as projects are in the New York City public schools.  Eliminating this requirement can reduce project costs by millions of dollars.
  • School districts should be allowed the flexibility to use the Employee Benefits Accrued Liability Reserve (EBALR) to offset state aid reductions.
  • The state must assure that the funding of charter schools does not adversely impact the funding of public schools and that charter schools are held to the same financial audits and high academic standards as public schools.
  • The district should be allowed to print out a significantly lower amount of ballots for specific election, budget and bond votes.  When the district is forced to use digital machines, they will be required to print a set of 90,000 ballots for each election, but there are usually fewer than 5,000 voters.

According to Assistant Superintendent for Business Paul Defendini, the Farmingdale School District will meet the tax levy cap in 2012-2013 by using to preserve essential programs, but that this is not a long-term solution. The full budget will be presented in the upcoming few months.

"Bottom line, there is no extra money coming from the state," Capobianco said about the trip. "I think the legislators are starting to realize their mistake with the cap but don't think we will see any legislative will soon."


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