Prop 2 on Bellmore School Budget Ballot Passes Without Board Support

Earlier this year a proposition petition was submitted to the Bellmore Board of Education for approval that would decrease the number of members serving on the board from six to five.

The petition was signed by the required number of voters, which is 75, according to District Clerk Randy Yee.

Anybody can come up with a proposition that they want to be placed on the ballot, and assuming it's something reasonable, the board has to accept it," Yee explained. "If it's something totally unreasonable, the board can reject it."

This proposition was on the ballot about six years ago, but was voted down.

The board as a whole did not sponsor or support this proposition and neither did /any individual members. 

Having fewer trustees will make the board's work much harder," the board said in a statement. "Like all school boards, Bellmore is a working board of education, with each member assigned specific duties. Fewer members will mean more work for each board member. It goes against common sense that less representation could ever be beneficial. Having one less board member will result in a loss of ideas, communication, visibility and representation of our community and children. In addition, no monetary savings will be realized by decreasing the size of the board, since board members are unpaid volunteers."

Jay L.T. Breakstone, always an outspoken member of the board, added that this is the "stupidest thing I ever heard of. How smart could it be if the people who proposed it never came forward to explain it? We have been proud in Bellmore to have probably the only elected, even-numbered board in New York State. We've worked hard to make it a positive, cooperative board, dedicated to children. An important change like this should have been discussed in public, debated in the community and been subjected to examination, rather than the result of an accident on the ballot. To this day, we in Bellmore still don't know why this size reduction of an unpaid, volunteer group makes any sense to anybody."

Proposition 2, which failed by a vote of 866 to 736, will take effect in the 2011-12 school year. Trustees Breakstone and Steven Traum are up for re-election for this term, which means one or both could be ousted, depending if any challengers are on the ballot as well.