School committee members had some excellent questions that led to much discussion about the administration’s suggestions for the Fiscal Year 2017 budget, expected to be substantially lower than the current year’s budget. These suggestions came out of the November vote by the school committee. Choices at that meeting were to create a ‘level service budget’ that would add $500,000 to the current budget; to create a ‘level funded budget’ that would hold spending to the same level as this year’s budget; or to create one of two reduction budgets – just reducing this year’s budget by $630,000 (the amount of the state’s mitigation funding) or to reduce the budget by that amount and then add in an adjustment to account for increasing costs. The committee chose the last option, which creates a ‘target’ that requires approximately $400,000 in cuts from this year’s current budget.
The district’s administrative team provided these choices to the School Committee knowing that each would require much work and very different operational scenarios. Setting a direction early in the detailed budget development work allows for a much fuller process and focused discussion, ensuring that student services are impacted as little as possible. As the committee and school staff move forward with sorting out the operational details for next year, it’s important to realize that changing the budget by a substantial amount months later in the process—whether that amount is more or less—becomes difficult if it impacts the basic decisions made early in the budget process.
The essential and basic changes outlined to the committee last week were to revert back to an elementary, middle school, and high school structure; to further reduce administrative staff (already reduced by 31 percent over the last 5 years); and to end all district activities by 9 p.m. While some details were shared with the committee last week (which you can review on the district’s website), the questions at the meeting were focused on student opportunities, on the student and parent impact of making elementary schools PreK to 5, middle school 6 to 8, and leaving the high school 9 to 12, and how existing administrators would be able to add the responsibilities of the Director of Academics to their already overloaded jobs.
I believe that the administrators who were at the meeting (all except for the assistant principals) did an excellent job in demonstrating that they had already spent much time and thought on how these changes would impact the district, had already discussed the changes with school councils, staff, and other groups to gauge interest and surface potential problems, and had looked at the potential cost savings available without needing to layoff any staff (although still reducing staff through retirements). Although each administrator who spoke noted the difficulty of expanding their responsibilities, each believed it could be done—although not to the degree of detail and level of service that students, parents, the community and the state have come to rely upon. The bottom line is that we won’t fully understand the impact until we’ve actually implemented and lived with the changes. But if the towns’ wish to see their assessments reduced and there is little hope that the state will provide additional funding, and the district is to remain focused on providing a good education without reducing student opportunities, then we have to begin a process that streamlines the district, allows for a new structure that will provide stability for at least 3 to 5 years, and potentially allows for sharing services with other organizations. Given the direction chosen by the school committee and the options available to meet the funding parameters of that direction, we believe that the ideas outlined above will have the least impact on student opportunities. Further details of these changes will be more fully developed and shared with both the committee and the public, which we hope will result in a budget that can be supported by both members of the school community (students, parents and staff) and by the communities as a whole.
