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Parents spoke out Tuesday night against cuts to the Riverhead Central School District’s elementary dual language program and instructional staffing reductions proposed by the administration in its 2024-25 budget.
Alek Lewis reports on Riverheadlocal.com that most of the criticism of the proposal was directed at the district gutting its K-4 school dual language program, in which both native English and Spanish speaking elementary school students learn by taking courses in both languages. District officials said that instead of being offered in all four of the district’s elementary schools, the program will be consolidated at Phillips Avenue Elementary School, where the program began more than a decade ago. The program was expanded to include the other three elementary schools in the current school term.
Eliminating the positions mentioned this week, which would eliminate 56.8 full-time faculty and staff positions from the district through layoffs and attrition, allows the Riverhead Central School District to reduce potential expenditures for salary and benefits by $6.68 million according to Interim Assistant Superintendent for Business Marianne Cartisano.
The administration has proposed a $201.4 million budget for next school year — an increase of $9.4 million, or roughly 5%, over its current budget. The proposal would require a tax levy increase of 3.34%, the maximum allowed by the state-imposed tax levy cap in Riverhead next year. Several of the positions being cut were funded by a portion of roughly $20 million in federal coronavirus recovery funding the district received over the last three school years. The federal funding runs out this year.
The Riverhead School Board is scheduled to vote on adopting a budget on April 16 and hold a hearing on the budget May 14. The budget will be up for a vote by district residents on May 21.
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A shoplifting epidemic costing retailers in New York state $4.4 billion a year is creating a shadow re-sale economy that ranges from eBay to bodegas. Michael Kaplan reports in THE NY POST that shoplifting in New York City alone rose 64% from June 2019 to June 2023, according to the Council on Criminal Justice. In 2022, the total estimated loss to shops in the state was $4.4 billion, Governor Kathy Hochul said last month. And retailers and law enforcement told The Post that the need to sell the stolen goods has created a sprawling underground economy. Thieves and middlemen are selling shoplifted goods on resale sites such as eBay and Facebook Marketplace and filling warehouse spaces at illegal pawn shops. Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said he had busted a super-sized version of such an operation. “We surveilled the boosters and saw them transporting their goods to EZ Cash Pawn & Jewelry in Brentwood,” said Tierney. “The goods, which seemed to be stolen locally, would be kept in a room behind the pawn shop. It looked like a Home Depot warehouse.” Cross-state travel is part of the pattern, Suffolk County DA Tierney told The Post. “In a 2022 arrest, when a group cleaned out $94,000 worth of purses from a Balenciaga store in East Hampton, a defendant was wearing an ankle bracelet from a prior arrest in another jurisdiction,” he said. In other cases that law enforcement had dealt with, said Tierney, “Shoplifters would start in New Jersey, begin driving, and basically shoplift their way to Suffolk County to deliver the goods.”
