Long Islanders prep for Super Tuesday

Long Island residents will be voting on budgets for 124 school districts on Tuesday.

Kevin Vesey and Rob Taub

May 16, 2023, 12:29 AM

Updated 590 days ago

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Long Island residents are preparing to head to the polls to vote on budgets for their local school districts on Tuesday.
Out of the 124 school districts, five are looking to exceed the tax cap, including the town of Babylon. This comes despite very few of the districts dealing with the tax cap because of state aid.
The state is providing $34.5 billion in school aid for the 2023 school year. Some districts are even seeing tax decreases. William Floyd will have a tax cut of around 17%.
“There's a lot of districts that are going out with zero levy increases. Many districts are going below their allowable cap,” said Nassau-Suffolk School Board Association’s Bob Vecchio.
Babylon Schools District Superintendent Brian Conboy told News 12 that their district didn’t receive a large increase in state aid.
"Record inflation, additional state aid that is far less than neighboring districts, and historically low tax levy increases for the past several years have put us in a position now where if we do not take this action, we will be forced to make drastic programming and services cuts," added Conboy.
For the district to exceed the tax cap, there would need to be a 60% super majority in favor. The other four school districts looking to pierce the tax cap are all small districts on the East End.