Mineola officials praise voters, trustees

BY JOSEPH D'ANDREA

Mineola School District’s budget was approved on May 16, and Mineola Board of Education President Margaret Ballantyne-Mannion and Vice President Patrick Talty were re-elected running unopposed.

Ballantyne and Talty received 612 and 602 total votes, respectively, and a majority 637 of the 795 total votes, or 80.13%, allowed for the budget to be passed.

Prior to the election voting results, Talty said, “I want to thank everybody that has come out to vote… I’d like to thank our district clerk, Linda Spagnola, for putting together a very smooth, easy-to-vote [system], and all of the hardworking poll workers here in [the Synergy Building] at Mineola High School. I’d also like to thank the District Council PTAs for putting together the Meet the Candidates night. It was a privilege for Dr. Ballantyne and I to meet with a very well-attended turnout, and to share our thoughts on where we’d like to go in the next three years here in the district.”

In addition to the passing of the budget, Andrew Casale, assistant superintendent for business and operation, mentioned that the board’s spending plan was already approved at the state level. Their title grant is usually approved in the late summer to early fall, he noted.

Casale discussed the proposed title plan for next year, including foundation aid that Mineola is getting from the state, and some grant monies.

“Two years ago, the state started fully funding the districts with foundation aid in any district that received more than 10% increase each year,” Casale said. “I was asked to develop a plan and ask for stakeholder feedback, and we’ve done that over the last several years.”

“The district is receiving a little over 20% in foundation aid, $2.8 million, which has been really helpful with our budget, but also helping with dif- ferent initiatives that we continue to tackle,” Casale added. “Each one of these goals and target areas is directly related to the state target areas.”

Casale spoke on the hiring of additional teachers and support staf to maintain small class sizes, which “are well below the class size policy, and they have been and will continue to be. Since we are continuing to hire more teachers in addition to replacing teachers upon retirement, we will continue that next year.”

The board is also planning to continue increasing attention on special education programs and services.

“We’ll be adding a new RISE (Resources, Information, Support & Engagement) class for next year, one more self-contained class at Jackson Avenue, and in adding these classes, we also then, in turn, have to add special ed teacher aides and related services, speech services,” Casale said.

In reference to increasing support for students, the board mentioned that they’ve added a new ad-