School Committee, Select Board close FY17 budget gap

March 31, 2016 | G. Michael Dobbs
news@thereminder.com

LONGMEADOW – The budget $125,000 gap for funding free full-day kindergarten recently  shrunk by at least $77,000 due to additional funding for the program by the School Committee and Select Board.

The School Committee voted 4 to 3 at its March 28 meeting to cut school choice funds by $50,000 in an effort to bridge the budget gap.  

On Feb. 11 the School Committee voted to request approximately $1 million in additional funding from the town. The Select Board’s original counter offer was $125,000 less than what was requested.

Another part of the March 29 vote was to allow the Select Board to charge the district for costs associated with maintaining the high school parking lot. Typically, that cost is factored into the town budget. The vote entailed utilizing $48,000 in parking fees to offset the maintenance costs on the town side of the budget.

School Committee member Michelle Grodsky later told Reminder Publications the committee’s decision was made in an effort to help balance the budget and potentially reduce the cost of funding free kindergarten.

“We spent hours combing through any line items that we could decrease or any areas where we could save,” she explained.

She added she considers the idea to utilize the parking fees to help balance the town budget an offer of good faith in regards to negotiating with the town.

The next day, The Select Board voted 4 to 1 to grant the school district an additional $27,000 to help further bridge the budget gap.

Select Board Chair Richard Foster said the money was taken out of a reserve account used to build up funds to replace fire trucks. Typically, $100,000 is put into that account each fiscal year.

Foster, the only selectman to not endorse the idea, said his decision was based on the “merits of where money was being taken” and not on the benefits of full-day kindergarten, which he supports.

Assistant Superintendent for Finance and Operations Thomas Mazza said during the March 28 meeting any cuts the committee choses to make will have an impact on the district, whether they would be utility, discretionary line items or staff cuts.

“If you want to [cut] somewhere else, you have to weigh what impact that potential reduction is going to have on class size, on program, and on services,” he noted.

School Committee member Kimberly King reviewed the school budget’s line items with Mazza for more than an hour during the meeting, which yielded the idea to utilize some of the parking fees.

Not all School Committee members were in favor of decision. School Committee Vice Chair Michael Clark and School Committee members John Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Bone voted against the budget strategies.

Clark said if there were areas where the district could make further reductions, that option should be explored.

“We have basically up until the minute before the moderator calls Town Meeting to order to decide on what we’re going to do,” he explained prior to the vote. “We have the ability to be at the following Town Meeting to amend our budget to reflect the decision we have made.”

Clark said although the Select Board has been generous to the district in granting additional funds this year, during past years the district was underfunded.

Fitzgerald asserted the committee should try to amend the budget to reflect the full-day kindergarten cost during the May 10 Annual Town Meeting.

“What’s so wrong with a fight on the Town Meeting floor?” he asked.

School Committee Chair Janet Robinson said in her discussions with the selectmen, none have argued against the merits of free full-day kindergarten.

“How strongly do we want to push and potentially be in a situation the day after Town Meeting where we’re not only having to make $125,000 in cuts, but now we [would have to make] $225,000 [in cuts] because we’re not fully funding tuition free kindergarten versus working with the board and Finance Committee to find a compromise now?” Robinson asked.

The district would receive $100,000 from the state next year if free full-day kindergarten were approved. The district could utilize the same amount in free cash and use state funds to offset the one-time expenditure money.  

Robinson described the fiscal year as a “perfect storm” with regards to budget woes on both the town and school district sides of the budget.

“No one department in town is getting everything they want in their budget,” she noted. “I know we’re not.”

Among proposed budget cuts the district has examined in order to establish free kindergarten include cutting three teaching positions or the loss of instrumental music instruction for grades 4 and 5.

Superintendent of Schools Marie Doyle said other cuts the district’s leadership team investigated include literacy coaching and adjustment counselor positions at the elementary school level and the loss of some programs at the high school.

“Those were the other options that we had and we ruled them out because we felt that a little bit larger class size without losing program, without losing coaches, would be better,” she explained.  

Got a comment about this story? Go to http://speakout.thereminder.com and let us know.

Share this: