Residents in the North Syracuse Central School District voted in favor of the 2015-16 budget on May 19 by a margin of 2,037 to 726.
The $150.8 million budget includes a 2.03 percent increase in the tax levy, as well as increases in staffing. The district will continue to fund full-day kindergarten, which the district first introduced in the 2013-14 school year, though conversion aid from the state was set to run out at the end of the 2014-15 school year. However, according to Assistant Superintendent for Management Donald Keegan, no additional taxpayer funds will be needed to fund the program.
“We knew all along that we were going to have a couple of years’ worth of aid. Once we got to the third year, we were going to have to make some decisions,” Keegan said. “In that context, when we got our [full state] aid package for this year, we got about a $3.5 million increase in aid.”
Keegan said the aid came at exactly the right time.
“We had a $2 million deficit going into the budget process. We presumed we weren’t going to get an increase in aid at all. We didn’t know what was going to happen,” he said. “Fortunately, we did get that increase. We were able to plug that deficit. We also made other adjustments in our revenues and tighten up some other places a little, and we were left with about $1.5 million in state aid that we were not going to use, and we said that was perfect to fund our full-day kindergarten.”
Thanks to that increase, the district will be able to continue to fund full-day kindergarten every year without an additional increase in taxes.
“State aid is basically the school district’s paycheck. That’s our income every year, between that and the tax levy,” Keegan said. “We got a raise in the form of the increase in state aid. We’re excited to be able to spend that raise on full-day kindergarten. Unless we see a cut in state aid, we’ll be able to keep full-day kindergarten without cutting programs or going back to the taxpayers.”
North Syracuse voters also approved a $1.4 million bus proposition by a vote of 2,052 to 710.
Three candidates were elected to full three-year terms on the board of education: George Harrington was reelected with 2,053 votes, Michael Leone received 1,987 votes and Paul Farfaglia received 1,941 votes. Michael Shusda was also elected to a one-year term set to expire June 30, 2016, to fill the unexpired term of Catherine Cifaratta-Brayton, who passed away in March.
Additionally, the Salina Free Library proposition for $421,858 was approved with 115 yes votes and 32 no votes.
