Friday, August 19, 2016
Vol. 76, No. 32
PETER PAN JR.
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Syosset School Board focuses on food, allergies BY RIKKI N. MASSAND
At the August meeting of the Syosset Board of Education, students performed three songs from their summer stock performance of “Peter Pan, Jr.” See page 13. Above: (Front row) Meghan Powers, Melanie Sena, Molly Powers, “Peter Pan” Victoria Graceffa, and “Tink” Sofia Shah boys in back) Lucas Cang and Minze Fan. S
At the Monday, August 15 Syosset Central School District meeting Peggy Grosso, coordinator of Educational Services, reported on the district’s Nutritional Advisory Committee and the Food Allergy Committee, established nearly 17 months ago. Grosso defined the charge of the nutrition committee as reviewing the school district’s current nutritional program and “to explore new ideas to enhance nutrition awareness for our students.” The committee consists of teachers, PTA, district administration, school nurses, food services personnel and students. For 2016-’17 the committee focuses on opportunities to discuss food choices, nutrition, ways of increasing student awareness while making food selections and ongoing education to comply with new USDA regulations. The committee and PTA have cooperated to explore ways to promote healthy lifestyles to all community members. In 2015-’16 building representatives
from each Syosset school met periodically with district committee members. As a result, Grosso explains that significant changes were made to food services in Syosset. She detailed the improvements for the school board, students and parents on Monday night: “Pre-made sandwiches are now offered, particularly to benefit students who do not have time in their schedules to spend waiting in line. A greater variety of vegetables has been added for sandwiches and wraps. There is an increase in the variety of fruit as well as hummus, all of which were requested by students,” she said. Grosso spoke about procedural improvements for food services “as a result of this collaboration” for nutritional education. “More assistance (staff) has been added to accelerate wait time. There are now breakfast carts in all three secondary schools (Syosset High and H.B. Thompson and South Woods Middle Schools). The committee will continue See page 15
Tax levy for 2016-’17 approved by School Board BY RIKKI N. MASSAND Three months after voters approved the Syosset Central School District budget of $219.86 million, the local tax levy calculation was established at the August 15 Board of Education meeting. Superintendent of Schools Dr. Thomas Rogers explained that although the annual budget was adopted by the board in spring “the budget is a spending budget” and by law, the tax levy is not adopted by the school board until the end of summer.
A resolution on Monday night’s meeting agenda noted under “financial operations of the school district” covered setting the Syosset schools’ and public library tax levies for 2016-’17. Dr. Patricia Rufo, the assistant superintendent for business, explained details of the tax levy for this school year as $187,650,187 plus an additional $6,919,960 for the public library’s budget of the district, creating a grand total of $194,570,147. “The tax levy represents a .14 percent increase over the prior year’s tax levy. Also this amount is under our calculat-
ed tax cap for New York State. The tax levy is the portion of revenue that is paid for by residents of the district. We arrive at this amount by starting at our budget expenditures. Then we subtract out items like state aid, local revenue (for example PILOTs, the largest component of local revenue) and we subtract out district reserves. We are allocating about $5 million from our fund balance this year based on savings from the prior year, and about $3.8 million in our restricted reserves. When we backed all of that out that leaves us with the tax
levy amount,” Rufo said. To clarify for residents Rufo said the role of the Syosset school district is to set the tax levy, coming to that one amount. “How that is distributed among homeowners is a result of the taxing mechanism of Nassau County (assessments) and there is a formula that they use impacted by things such as base proportions – different proportions that the different property tax classes are alloSee page 15
Syosset student blazes new trails PAGE 10 Town of Oyster Bay Supervisor’s Run PAGE 4