The Herricks Board of Education agreed last week to use a $194,478 reduction in what the district had budgeted for insurance to hire two full-time teaching assistants for the Searingtown School and 10 part-time teachers aides for district kindergarten classes.
At the outset of last Thursday night’s school board meeting, Herricks board President Jim Gounaris announced that district administrators were informed last week that a projected 8 percent increase in district costs for the New York State Empire health insurance plan would actually be 4 percent.
Gounaris said after consulting with district and building administrators the board concluded that the best use of the money would be “to alleviate the most pressing class size issues on the elementary level.”
The two full-time teaching assistants, he said, would be used for fifth and third grade classes in Searingtown while the 10 part timer assistants would aid kindergarten classes in the three district elementary schools is the best solution.
“Is it Eden? No. I think we’re going to be better off than we were two weeks ago,” Gounaris said.
Parents of kindergarten students had turned out in force at the school board’s last meeting two weeks earlier to press for more adult supervision in the 10 kindergarten classes.
Two of the kindergarten classes currently contain 24 students, exceeding prior district guidelines – abandoned under tax cap pressure two years ago – that limited class sizes to 22 students.
The 10 part-time aides to be hired will work for three hours daily in the respective kindergarten classes, Gounaris said.
“This is fair. We’re putting them where there’s the most need,” board Trustee Christine Turner said.
Board Trustee Brian Hassan called the additional aides “a good compromise solution.”
Christine Liu, a member of the Center Street School PTA, called the board’s decision to put the aides in the kindergarten classes for three hours a day a “spot on” solution. Liu was among the kindergarten parents who had aired their concerns about supervision of the kindergarten classes.
In prepared statement, Gounaris said the full-time teaching assistants in the Searingtown will be assigned “on an as-needed basis” by the school principal to fifth and third grade classes there.
“It will be in the hands of the principals because they will know the needs in the classrooms,” said Deirdre Hayes, Herricks assistant superintendent for curriculum.
Two of the three fifth grade classes in Searingtown have 29 students, with 28 students in the third class, according to Hayes. She said two of the third grade classes have 27 students and the third class 26 students.
Herricks Assistant Superintendent for Business Helen Costigan said district administrators took guidance from the Empire Plan in budgeting for the health insurance increase for the 2013-14 school year.
“It’s always a challenge and we rely on them to give us an estimate,” Costigan said.
Costigan said Empire’s original estimate had not changed as recently as six weeks earlier.
Herricks Superintendent of Schools John Bierwirth said calculations for the current budget would have been different with a more accurate estimate of insurance costs.
“Had we had those numbers back in the spring, we wouldn’t have made the cuts we did,” Bierwirth said.
In other developments:
• Gounaris said he and Bierwirth sent letters to state Sen. Jack Martins (R-Mineola) and state Assemblywoman Michelle Schimel (D-Great Neck) objecting to the 1.66 percent cap on school district cap levies being implemented for 2014-15 budgets by the state comptroller’s office.
The letter states that the difference between the 1.66 percent cap and the 2 percent cap formula previously in place is more than $300,000, the equivalent of three full-time teaching positions.
Gounaris said he also sent a letter to acting county Assessor James Davis objecting to the average property tax increase of 6.98 percent countywide. In the letter, Gounaris said the increase was “extremely unfair” to Herricks School District taxpayers who expected their taxes to rise in line with the 3.02 percent levy increase the board approved for the 2013-14 budget.
Copies of both letters were available at the board meeting.
• Bierwirth made a presentation pointing out the disparity between recent NWEA assessment test results and the lower scores from last spring’s state assessment tests.
The NWEA scores typically improved in those school districts where the NWEA tests are administered.
He said the reason for the lower passing percentages for the state tests was not the increased difficulty of the tests, but the higher “cut points” for passing the tests.
“What really changed and moved the scores was using new benchmarks,” Bierwirth said.
He said the passing score for the third grade math test was raised year-to-year to the 69th percentile of scores attained by students in 2013, from the 39th percentile for 2012.
