_________ Oceanside/island park ________
HERALD Survivor visits Chabad of o’Side
Flipping cakes for a good cause
o’Side budget is $186.7 million
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VoL. 60 No. 20
MAY 15 - 21, 2025
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I.P. proposes $45 million school budget By KEPHERD DANIEL kdaniel@liherald.com
Courtesy Oceanside School District
Valedictorian Madison Moore and salutatorian Shehreyar Ahmad are this year’s top two students at Oceanside High School.
Meet Oceanside’s valedictorian and salutatorian for 2025 By KEPHERD DANIEL kdaniel@liherald.com
Valedictorian Madison Moore and salutatorian Shehreyar Ahmad — who have demonstrated unwavering dedication, academic excellence and a passion for personal growth — will lead Oceanside High School’s graduating class of 2025. Both students recently reflected on their journeys, motivations and experiences that shaped their high school careers. “My parents are very, have a very good work ethic, and they always just taught me,” Moore shared. “I always wanted to be proud of the work that I put in. I think that that’s what led me to keep trying to aim for success and keep trying to push myself more and more.”
Both students credited their success to strong parental support and personal drive. Moore, who will attend the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce, highlighted her passion for mathematics and her parents’ work ethic as key motivators. Ahmad, who’s heading to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he will study pre-med biology, emphasized his mother’s encouragement and his own desire to excel academically. Their high school careers have been marked by extensive extracurricular involvement. Moore was active in DECA, a club that prepares students for careers in marketing, finance, hospitality, and management and was a passionate soccer player becoming involved COntinued On pAge 9
The Island Park School District has unveiled a proposed $45 million budget for the 2025-26 school year — an increase of roughly $667,000, or 1.51 percent, over the current spending plan. In a presentation at the Board of Education meeting on May 6, school officials detailed the plan. Despite rising costs, the administration and board have avoided any increase in the tax levy, seeking to ease the burden on local homeowners. A key driver of the district’s ability to hold the line on property taxes is a substantial boost in state aid. Island Park’s aid allocation will swell by $2.3 million — an increase of more than 72 percent — due to an adjustment in the district’s combined wealth ratio following last year’s settlement of litigation over property assessments. “That adjustment lowered our combined wealth ratio and unlocked significantly more foundation aid, transportation aid, BOCES reimbursement and other categorical grants,” the district’s business administrator, Salvatore Carambia, explained. The breakdown of the $2.3 million uptick includes roughly $900,000 in additional foundation
aid, $614,000 for transportation, $804,000 for BOCES and $123,000 for other program-based state grants. Local revenue sources will also contribute an extra $95,000, primarily from higher-interest income on reserves. Meanwhile, payments in lieu of taxes remain flat, and the district plans to draw down $1.1 million through interfund transfers and reserves, and to apply $2.7 million from fund balances — $400,000 from the ERS reserve, $150,000 from the workers’ compensation reserve and $600,000 from debt service reserves — to balancing the budget without raising the tax levy. The proposal maintains the district’s three-part spending structure: program costs account for 82.4 percent of total expenditures; administration, 8.6 percent; and capital projects, 9 percent. The administrative component will rise only modestly, from $3.73 million to $3.8 million, while capital spending will increase by $215,000, to $4 million. The lion’s share of the $667,000 increase, some $380,000, is allocated to program expenses, bringing that total to approximately $37 million. T he financial blue print COntinued On pAge 17