by Frank Schroth
At their meeting on January 14th, the school committee voted to approve a $500,000 cuts to their requested budget. Chair Leroy Walker reported on a couple of meetings that had been held with other town officials at which a decision was made to recommend a FY16 budget that would use a significant amount of the estimated ~$2.9 in free cash to cover operational expenses and serve as a bridge to FY17 at which time they would look to pass an operational override.
The meeting of officials which included members of the Warrant Committee, Chair Conlon of the Selectmen, and others had made a request of the Warrant Committee to develop a variety of financial scenarios for the use of free cash. They favored a scenario that would allocate ~$2.4 million toward contractual obligations and ~$500K for capital costs.
The schools were looking at about a $1 million shortfall. This scenario reduces that shortfall to ~$500K. Mr. Walker said that the thinking was to use the free cash for operations, something not typically done, to address FY16 and allow time for educating town meeting in May and October about a FY17 override that would secure the town financially for the next 2 – 4 years. He noted that the town will be looking for an override of $300,000 this year to cover the long term medical costs of an injured firefighter.
Glenn Pavlicek, Assistant Superintendent of Business, said in a reponse to a question from Ms. Padera that the two overrides needed to be separate regardless of when they are requested. The town cannot combine them into a single override.
Walker was recommending the scenario and the school committee voted unanimously to adopt it. The Board of Selectmen will be taking up the issue this evening (1/21).
Based on the assumption of a $500K cut in their requested budget, Superintendent Mary Gormley reviewed the cuts that would be required to meet that. In early December the school committee approved a ~$591K advancement initiative. The cuts oulined by Ms. Gormley did not affect that. To meet the budget, the schools would cut the full time equivalent of 17.7 staff, 3.5 of them from the elementary schools. This includes but is not limited to:
- reducing Gr 4&5 Art to 30 mins from 45 mins and eliminating Gr 5 chorus,
- eliminating half-time pre-school coordinator
- taking History off team at Gr 7 & 8
- reducing electives at High School and increasing class size of electives to 30
- eliminating a World Language teacher at High School
- eliminating a Special Ed secretary and eliminating a Wold Language teacher
Ms. Padera took exception to these cuts, particularly art, music, and preschool coordinator, which is a position she had avocated for. The committee voted to approve the cuts with Ms. Padera voting against.
Correction: An earlier version of the this post reported that the pre-school coordinator, a recently approved position, would be reduced from full to half time. It was not a full time position. It was approved as a half time position. There will be no pre-school coordinator.
taking History off team at Gr 7 & 8
not sure if this means eliminating history class or something else, but we need to remember the past. Too many of the youths today have no idea of what their grandfathers/grandmothers gave so we can have the lives we live today.
We emailed the administration and they confirmed that history will not be eliminated. In removing history from the team they will effectively eliminate one teacher and increase the class size of the remaining history classes. The remaining history teachers will have students from multiple teams and parents seeking to meet with their child’s history teacher will need to coordinate that outside of the team. Our thanks to administration for the clarification and hope this helps.