In an effort to keep the budget consistent with the allowable increase due to the tax levy, the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District announced that there would be cuts in personnel as well as programs for the 2012-13 year.
Cynthia Strait Regal, deputy superintendent of business, said that the district is anticipating eliminating six administrative positions, eight teaching positions, three permanent subs, late buses for the high schools and will be shrinking extracurricular activities.
"We lost a lot of teaching positions and we lost a lot of clerical positions last year," she said, explaining that these additional cuts are necessary to stay inside the budget.
Strait Regal put together a presentation that showed the expenses the district incurs for each student – $20,158 per head – and that the budget growth in four years will only be about 3.8 percent based on her estimates, something that she fears will be bad for the school district.
As well as a decreased operating budget, Strait Regal said that the district will also have a hard time generating fund balance due to the fact that the increases in budgets will be so small.
"I've been here in good times and I've been here in bad times. I've never seen anything as devastating as this," she said.
Board member Janet Goller echoed her sentiment. "Sitting on this board, it's just heartbreaking to make these kind of cuts. The students are being impacted in a huge way."
Although the board shared this information with those gathered, parents came out to support the foreign language program – namely French – after rumors around the community circulated that kids would not be attending their home school after middle school if they opted to take French.
Dr. Henry Kiernan, superintendent, assured the parents that the district would not be dropping the language and they are finding ways to make that happen smoothly for the students.
"One thing we can say is that students love their home schools," he said. "We are committed to keeping French and we are struggling to make that happen. We are trying to keep what we have."
Although there was some confusion as parents in the middle schools were told that their children would have to go to Mepham if they chose to take French, Kiernan said that the district decided not to go with the "academy" but to stick to the magnet plan, in which the kids that opt to take French would be bussed to another school and then brought back to their home school after the class. He noted that the parents should have been notified when that decision was made.
Kiernan added that the district is also looking to add Mandarin, which would be an online program taught through BOCES, to the district's selection.
Let me sum up why through an event that occurred a year ago at Merrick Avenue Middle School, (North Merrick/Merrick students). A class was split up by a somewhat new teacher, not from the area, she divided the students up to North and South side of Merrick. She told them to debate why their side of town was better. The debate turned into furious arguments and insults about the type of people on each other person's side of town. Parents began calling Principal Blum throughout the day, issuing complaints. This behavior is not genetic. These students learned their detest for each other's neighborhood communities from their parents. These four areas of Bellmores and Merricks act and live very differently from one another and they strongly disfavor each other's area of town. They make it so flagrantly known their children catch on to it and share it as well. Is this everyone? No of course not, but the majority, absolutely detest the other areas. If they could many would try to dissolve the central high school district.
PS-Senior Administrators at JHS take credit for the quality of students that are in our district. The real reason why our kids do so well is because of the home enviornment . JHS didn't have any teacher with an interactive website for the students until the beginning of last year which is mandatory in just about every school district in this country. It might be a coincidence but I started an email campaign with Poppe exposing this issue in the Spring of 2010. The response from the Administration was "that due to the teacher contract, there was no way to enforce the teachers to create interactive websites". After these emails were posted to the Merrick Patch and sent to Newsday, interactive teacher websites suddenly sprung up. For those parents who are just starting out in this school district, voice your concerns, DON'T STAY QUIET!