Voters will be heading to the polls to decide on their school district’s 2026-27 budgets on Tuesday, May 19. Here’s what to know from local districts:

Connetquot School District is proposing a $230,328,468 budget for the 2026-27 school year, with a tax levy increase of 2.12 percent, or $3,082,521 above the current year’s levy. The tax levy increase is below the state’s cap, so only a simple majority is needed to pass the budget.

The proposed budget includes the excessing of nine educational positions, including five teachers, four elementary and one secondary, along with four other positions in areas including FAC, music, technology and world languages.

Additionally, the proposed budget would cut two administrators and eliminate several departmental positions, consolidating director positions in areas including math and sciences, the humanities, and pupil personnel services.

These decisions were made by the district to fill a lingering $3 million budget gap the district and board of education deliberated on from February through late April.

“There are a lot of tough decisions that we as a board and the cabinet had to make for this budget, and none of them were taken lightly,” said Connetquot Board of Education president Marissol Mallon during the adoption hearing. “We had to think of sustainable decisions for the district and what we could do to help progress and see into the future.”

The Connetquot Board of Education voted three to two to adopt the budget, with trustees Sara Parisi and Jacquelyn DiLorenzo voting against, due to what they felt were too many unanswered questions about where the money to fill the budget gap was coming from, which was originally even higher earlier in the school year, the trustees said they later learned.

The adopted 2026-2027 budget would retain the district’s alternative high school, alternative learning center and credit recovery, but remove the high school academy and reassign positions for it, and replace the BOCES Summer Enrichment Program with the Town of Islip’s Summer Playground Program, which takes place annually in Bohemia.

Two three-year-term trustee seats are also up for election. Incumbents April Iannitelli and Jacquelyn DiLorenzo are facing challengers Edward Barry, Jennie Keddy, and Jaclyn Napolitano-Furno. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Voting locations are the following: Those living north of Veterans Memorial Highway can vote at Ronkonkoma Middle School; those living between Veterans Memorial Highway and Sunrise Highway can vote at Connetquot High School; and those living south of Sunrise Highway can vote at Oakdale-Bohemia Middle School.

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