O.B.’s budget needed to move forward with mission

Four candidates running for three school board seats

By LAURA LANE llane@liherald.com

The Board of Education for the Oyster Bay-East Norwich Central School District approved a preliminary budget for 2023-2024 of $64,414,491 on Tuesday. It will be up to voters on May 16 to decide whether to approve it.

Superintendent Francesco Ianni said the district needs the budget approval to forge forward with its mission — to continue to make Oyster Bay one of the best and most innovative school districts in the nation.

“I am confident we are fulfilling that mission every day with the caliber of students we have today,” he said. “Our graduating class will be attending impressive colleges like Brown, U Penn, and NYU. That says a lot of who we are as a district and the community we have.”

The difference between last year’s adopted budget and this year’s is roughly $2 million. Crafting the 2023-2024 budget was difficult this year, Ianni said, due to the low level of state aid the district traditionally receives but more importantly, inflation. Last year the consumer price index was 4.7 percent but this year it rose to 8 percent, meaning a large increase in costs for the district. State aid rose by roughly $129,000.

In order to maintain all programs and services, the district needed to set its tax levy — the amount a school district can propose as part of its annual revenue budget — at roughly $57 million, or 2.34 percent, Ianni said.

“Seventy-five percent of the budget is for salary and benefits, which is already set,” he explained. “There is $14 million in bene- fits. When creating our budget, we stay focused on what students need and look at the details.”

There were three priorities when creating the budget, Ianni said: to provide students with what they will need to be successful; to be fiscally responsible; and to focus on the future.

“Some people can have a myopic view,” he said. “If we don’t do maintenance each year five years from now it will be a very expensive capital project. All together we try to look at the future keeping an eye on it in order to make our present very strong. You have to look at the future to define the present, to know what’s negotiable and what isn’t.”