At the September 23, 2015 school committee meeting, the 2015-2016 school budget was once again discussed. As indicated in a prior column, the district does not have a town approved budget for the current year, although the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has approved 1/12th budget (based upon Gateway’s requested budget) at this time.
Due to the fact that 2/3rds of our member towns did not approve the budget, the school committee must submit another budget to the towns for consideration. The discussion at the September 23 meeting was whether the school committee should return what is essentially a similar budget to the towns because of the current unknown factors of mitigation funding from the state (hopefully as part of the FY’15 supplemental budget) and any potential ruling by the courts regarding Worthington’s withdrawal from the district (against the votes of the remaining six towns). There were a number of good points made during the discussion including why the school committee is being asked to make transfers in line items at this time (the reason being that we’re operating under a DESE approved budget that should reflect these changes). In addition, there was some discussion about providing a completely new budget for consideration (line items, revenue, assessments) but, as pointed out by the business manager, these items are already being shared through the transfer requests, the updated assessment letters, and the quarterly reports. We are certainly open to providing the school committee with information they need to make a decision and provide input into the process. As the committee moves forward with this next budget decision, it is important to note that even after adopting and resubmitting a budget, the school committee may revise and adopt a new budget any time prior to the towns’ approval of a budget. Thus, the school committee may wish to adopt another budget in late October or even in November based upon confirmed knowledge of mitigation funding or a ruling by the courts. Unfortunately, these delays are creating concerns in many different arenas and are impacting a smooth transition to the development of next year’s budget, which should also be occurring at this time.
We hope that these issues will be resolved in a timely manner (for example, at this point the court hearing is scheduled for October 22), which will allow everyone to move forward in a positive manner without further negative impacts on student services. In the meantime, we continue to move forward with the Gateway 2025 Visioning Project and the Gateway Towns Advisory Committee continues to work on beginning the Gateway Towns Sustainability Project, both of which have the potential to greatly impact the future of the district and our schools.
