Today's News

Babylon School District to hold final budget input meeting

Watch this week's edition of the Beacon for complete story

By Janine Logan      The community will have one more opportunity to comment on the proposed Babylon School District 2009 – 2010 spending plan when the board holds its work/study meeting, Monday, March 23rd, at 7:30 p.m. in the high school library.    Weeks in the making, this budget maintains all current programs and instruction levels with a budget to budget increase of 2.5 percent, according to Dr. Ellen Best-Laimit, school superintendent.      Governor Paterson’s announcement in early March about appropriation of federal stimulus funding assured the district of the $500,000 in state aid it could have lost for this fiscal year and next.  In addition, three teachers tendered their retirement notices, further reducing budget costs. One is a retiring elementary school teacher who will not be replaced due to a decline of about 30 students in 2009 – 2010 enrollment.      The final tax rate for 2009 – 2010 is not set by the board until August.  That is when the Town of Babylon releases the final property tax revenue amount to the school district.  The Babylon School District receives about 83 percent of its revenue from property taxes.      “Given the state of the economy, we told our board members that we wanted to keep the tax rate increase as close to two percent as possible,” said Dr. Best-Laimit.