Officials from the Port Washington school district presented a proposal to create a capital reserve with a maximum amount of $15 million, which would be funded over 10 years, during last week’s Board of Education meeting.

The reserve, according to Assistant Superintendent of Business Kathleen O’Hara, would be made up of leftover funds from the prior year and would be at no additional cost to the taxpayers.

“It would just simply be another reserve that we can put our money to do, specifically, ventilation and electrical upgrades necessary for the district,” O’Hara said.

Last week’s meeting was another partial budget overview for the 2022-23 school year that specifically gave the public an overview on district revenues and funds needed for personnel, adult education programs, driver’s education, the district’s English Language Learners program and the Nassau County Board of Cooperative Educational Services.

O’Hara said the district plans on increasing its costs for the English Language Learners program by more than $345,000 in the upcoming school year, citing a need to allow the program to grow more as the main reason. Some of the ways the program can grow, O’Hara said, would be having an ELL family night and having more parent orientations.

The district’s proposed BOCES budget also increased from last year, with the tentative additions of interpretation services, a curriculum development survey, computer-assisted instruction services and special education services, among others. The proposed BOCES budget is just above $6.6 million, an increase from last year’s $5.5 million budget.

The Nassau BOCES is the largest organization of its kind in the state and serves 56 school districts across the county. Officials said Port Washington receives more than 52 percent back on BOCES aidable services from the state based on the prior year’s services.

More than $110,000 will be allocated for the district’s driver’s education instruction, according to officials. The program, however, is classified as “budget neutral,” meaning the district generates revenue to cover the expenditures. O’Hara said the coronavirus pandemic caused some challenges for driver’s education over the past year, but the district still managed to serve nearly 260 students.

“With COVID it’s been a little challenging because we weren’t able to do all of the in-car instruction, but we were able to do the class instruction remotely, then we had students working with their parents to make up the driving hours,” O’Hara said. “We actually had a lot of participation from the students because it was more flexible.”

In terms of revenues, the district plans on using $2 million of appropriated fund balance to give back to the taxpayers to reduce the tax levy, which is currently set at 2.58 percent. O’Hara said. With that $2 million being given back to taxpayers, she said, the district would be $523,000 “above where we would want to be for a balanced budget.”

O’Hara said she is hopeful the district receives some funding once the budget is submitted to the state by April 1. Balancing the budget, she said, could be accomplished by either increasing revenues by $523,000, reducing spending requests by $523,000, or a combination of the two.

The district will hold a meeting on April 5 to go over the summary of the 2022-23 budget.