Schools

Taxes Up Despite Teacher Layoffs

School personnel face ax as schools curb spending.

Like 55 percent of voters in Levittown, Louise Cassano voted for the school spending plan only after the district rolled out a budget with an increase of about 3 percent.

But Cassano, like so many residents here and throughout Long Island, said she could barely absorb the hike, as little as it is. She said taxes are choking homeowners' abilities to make ends meet.

"The pressure on homeowners to pay these taxes is enormous, evidenced by the number of homes for sale, foreclosures and abandoned properties," Cassano said. "Homeownership, what was the American dream for several generations, is becoming a dream of the past."

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Cassano has lived in Levittown since 1964, when it was only about two decades in to being America's first suburb. Back then, young families poured into the Nassau County location to make a new start outside the city. Now, she said, younger Levittown residents are getting out.

"With a decline in young population, businesses close, tax revenues go down, services decline and communities become stagnant," Cassano said. "For those of us who are able to keep our homes, the value of what was thought to be our primary asset, will deteriorate."

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Still, Cassano said she only supported the budget because the increase was very close to the state-manded austerity budget that would have been implemented had voters turned it down.

The new budget means resident Ann Torcivia will have to pony up a bit more in 2012, though she doesn't have kids in the district. That, she argued, isn't fair.

"I'm going to stay in Levittown and I'm going to have to just bite the bullet, but there has to be a way of taxing the people who have kids and cutting the taxes for people who don't," Torcivia said.

The taxpayer revolt has left collateral damage in the form of laid off school teachers. In Levittown, 66 full timers are losing their jobs. Another 40 or so part-time employees are also expected to be out of luck, Darlene Rhatigan, the assistant superintendent in the district's department of administration and personnel, said in an interview earlier this month.

For Katie Winkelman, a Levittown teacher for six years, her luck finally ran out. This was the fourth straight year Winkelman faced the prospect of being let go in a numbers game. Each time, she survived. That won't happen this time. With the adoption of the 2011-2012 budget, the married homeowner has been told she'll be laid off. Winkelman said she plans to collect unemployment to pay her mortgage.

"I am sad one minute because I’m losing my livelihood, and mad the next minute because no one is helping us," she said.

The loss of faculty is also weighing down students.

"My daughter's favorite sixth-grade teacher at Salk is being transferred to an elementary school on the north end of town," said parent Kathleen Vaughan Ware. "This teacher has had such a positive impact on many students who transitioned to middle school.

"It's very sad."


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