The deal on the table is simple to grasp, even if you wish the math worked differently. South Country wants residents to approve a 13.45% school tax hike, well above what state law allows without a supermajority, and the budget on the table still cuts 55 jobs, including at least 43 teachers and five administrators. Pay more, get less. That is what the May 19 ballot is asking us to ratify. I am voting no, and this column lays out why.
What is on the table
Per News 12 Long Island, the Board of Education in late April approved a $150 million spending plan that would raise the average homeowner’s school taxes by roughly $749 per year. Because the plan pierces the state’s tax cap, it cannot pass on a simple majority. New York requires 60% of voters to sign off when a district goes over the cap, which is the law’s way of saying: you can do this, but you have to convince three out of every five neighbors it is the right call. The board vote itself was not unanimous. One trustee voted against the proposal before it eventually passed.
The cuts come anyway. Forty-three teachers, five administrators, and other support staff. Kids and families absorb that loss whether the budget passes or fails.
There is also a separate proposition on the ballot that would reduce the district’s busing radius. If approved, it brings the tax levy down to about 12.19%, or roughly $666 per home, a savings of about $83. The trade-off is fewer kids riding district buses to school. The district is essentially offering a smaller bill in exchange for a smaller service. That is its own kind of pay-more-get-less, just at a slightly lower volume.
How we got here
I have written about the fiscal arc twice already in this column. The first piece walked through how the district burned through reserves to cover overspending, then handed the public a sanitized story about it. The follow-up covered the State Comptroller’s report, which confirmed in dry, official language what residents had been saying in plain English for months: the district’s budgets were not built on reality.
Here are the numbers from the district’s own Financial Oversight and Accountability FAQ, no spin attached. The 2024-25 voter-approved budget was overspent by about $3.5 million, which produced a $1.8 million unassigned fund balance deficit on top of a roughly $16 million drop in the general fund balance. To paper over the gap, the district drew down reserves at a rate it cannot sustain.
That was last year. This year, even with spending freezes and personnel layoffs already in place, the State Comptroller’s enhanced budget review projects the district will run an $8.7 million deficit for the current school year. Read that again. The same district that botched its budget badly enough to attract state-level scrutiny is the one telling us its 2026-27 numbers are sound.
This is also the second straight year of cuts. Last spring, Patch reported that the district eliminated 51 positions to close a $3 million budget hole. Voters approved that budget. The cuts happened. Now we are being asked to do it again, only this time the ask is bigger, the cuts are bigger, and the tax hike is steep enough to require a supermajority.
The students already pushed back
In March, Bellport High School students walked out of class in protest of the proposed cuts. That is not nothing. Teenagers do not stage walkouts for theater. They do it because the people they see every day, the teachers running their clubs and coaching their teams, are about to disappear from the building. They are absorbing what the adults in the room are arguing about in spreadsheets.
The district’s response was a polished statement about fiscal recovery and preserving core programming. The students’ response was, essentially, you are talking past us.
The case for no
The argument for voting yes is the same one districts always make when they pierce the cap: if this fails, contingency hits, and contingency is worse. That is true as far as it goes. A failed budget triggers a contingency budget set by state formula, which would mean either deeper cuts or further reserve draws or both. I do not pretend that is painless. Anyone who tells you a no vote is risk-free is selling you something.
But here is the honest counter. Saying yes to this budget does not save the 43 teachers. They are cut in the proposal as written. Voting yes locks in those cuts, ratifies the 13.45% hike, and tells the board that residents will keep absorbing whatever is asked. It tells the people who got us here that the path of least resistance still works.
A no vote does not, by itself, fix the problem. The board still controls the contingency. But it is one of the few tools residents have to communicate that this is not acceptable, that the pattern of overspending followed by belt-tightening on residents and classrooms has to end somewhere, and that “trust us with more money” is not an answer this district has earned the right to make.
The state comptroller is already looking at this district. Residents have signed petitions for a state audit. The students walked out. A budget defeat at the polls would be the loudest signal residents can send through the legitimate channels available to them.
The board race is the long-term play
Two seats are open this year, both vacated by sitting board members E. Anne Hayes and Cheryl A. Felice. Four candidates are running per the district’s budget and election information page: Kenyanah Augustin, Linda Brown, Michael Kellerman, and John Muglia.
Read the Long Island Advance’s candidate write-up, and a pattern jumps out. Three of the four candidates explicitly identify financial accountability and trust as the number-one issue facing the district. Augustin talks about plain-language budget summaries and stronger two-way communication. Brown points to financial instability driven by a lack of transparency and brings administrative and fiduciary credentials to make the case. Muglia speaks of stronger oversight and budgets built around actual operating needs. Kellerman did not submit responses to the paper’s interview by print time.
I am not endorsing a specific candidate here. The point is that the community has been clear with the district about what is wrong, the candidates running for these seats have heard it, and three of four are running directly into that fire. Whatever happens with the budget on May 19, the people elected to those two seats will spend the next three years deciding whether the district corrects course or repeats the cycle.
The question I would ask each candidate, including the one who did not return calls: tell me specifically what you would do differently to keep us out of this position next year.
How to vote
Polls are open Tuesday, May 19, from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. at Bellport Middle School’s West Gym, 35 Kreamer Street. Qualified district residents who are registered voters can cast a ballot in person.
For absentee, early mail, or military ballots, contact District Clerk Christine Flynn at 631-730-1542 or cflynn@southcountry.org. Completed ballots must be received by 5 p.m. on the day of the vote.
The honest close
A no vote is not a victory lap. It does not undo the deficit, restore the reserves, or hire back the teachers being cut from this budget. It will likely make some short-term things worse before things get better.
What a no vote does is send a signal that this is the year residents stop saying yes by reflex, that “pay more, get less” is not a plan, and that rebuilding trust does not start with another tax hike on top of layoffs the public never asked for.
The board that produced this budget is asking for the benefit of the doubt. They have not earned it. Vote no on May 19, and on the same ballot, vote for board members who have been honest about how broken this is.
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