LONG BEACH, NY \u2014 The Long Beach Board of Education adopted its 2026-27 budget proposal Tuesday night, passing a nearly $162.5 million operating budget through another round of review before it goes to voters next month. That budget is $3.4 million higher than the budget for 2025-26, a 2.16 percent increase.<\/p>\n
In a presentation to the board, Assistant Superintendent for Finance and Operations Michael DeVito said the largest revenue category for the district is its tax levy; DeVito said the district is asking the community to pay about $114 million for the upcoming school year. That levy request constitutes a 2.2 percent increase in tax levy from last year, which DeVito said comes in under the state-mandated tax increase cap. Under state calculations, the maximum tax increase Long Beach Public Schools could levy would be 2.65 percent.<\/p>\n
Next, there\u2019s state aid, which is still pending the results of state budget negotiations in Albany. Currently, the board is projecting just shy of $28 million based on estimations from the state. The lion\u2019s share of the state aid is classified as foundation aid, which DeVito said he expected to top out at a 2 percent increase. While it could conceivably go above 2 percent, he said that possibility isn\u2019t one he\u2019s expecting.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat would truly be a surprise, if it goes up more than we expect,\u201d DeVito told the board, when asked about State aid. \u201cIn January, when we got the proposal, the governor said she was going to put a 1 percent increase in foundation aid\u2026The information we\u2019ve received, since January, says it\u2019s likely going to be a 2 percent increase. I doubt it\u2019s going to be any more than that.\u201d<\/p>\n
DeVito said the school district does have some time to set the tax levy, giving the district some wiggle room in the event that the state aid does come in higher than anticipated. <\/p>\n
Finally, there\u2019s miscellaneous income like tuition for out-of-district students and interest accrued by district accounts. That miscellaneous figure, plus PILOT agreements being paid to the school and the fund balance, add up to form the operating budget.<\/p>\n
Also on the mind of board members Tuesday was electric vehicles, an issue that has featured in Gov. Kathy Hochul\u2019s agenda for multiple years but has seen its rollout stalled locally. In the fall, one board of education member from elsewhere in Nassau County said they expected electric vehicle rollout in the state to \u201ccollapse under its own weight\u201d during a meeting. As for Long Beach, DeVito said the district is on the verge of purchasing a smaller electric vehicle.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re moving slowly, we\u2019re in the process of purchasing a small electric vehicle that we can use to transport one to two students that wouldn\u2019t require a big change in our infrastructure. At the same time, we have a group working with us, grant funded, to create an electrification study that we would present to the state to discuss some of the challenges of living on a barrier island, and where we might put a charging station that would be equipped to charge several buses \u2014 whether it\u2019s five, 10, 15 \u2014 as we scale it up.\u201d<\/p>\n
DeVito said electric bus adoption has been a challenge for the district, not only in procurement of the buses themselves but in terms of charging infrastructure. The bus prices, he said, are relatively high without much grant funding available to offset costs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re working on it, it\u2019s something we\u2019re involved in, but I\u2019d say it\u2019s slow progress,\u201d DeVito said. \u201cWe have our compressed natural gas buses, which are already very green, so, to make a change from a [compressed natural gas] bus to an electric bus isn\u2019t going to make a big difference in carbon footprint, because we already have a very green fleet.\u201d<\/p>\n
DeVito said he would be meeting with community groups over the upcoming week to further discuss the presented budget. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONG BEACH, NY \u2014 The Long Beach Board of Education adopted its 2026-27 budget proposal Tuesday night, passing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-270557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}