RON RIX
WESTFIELD – A $6,513,734 budget request was presented to the School Committee Monday by Ronald Rix, the district’s director of technology and business services, on behalf of the district’s principals.
The total is to be spread out district-wide between new personnel ($1,749,000), programs and materials ($779,590), technology ($1,320,914), maintenance ($1,410,330), and equipment ($1,253,900).
“In these times it’s important that you have absolute transparency going forward,” said Westfield Superintendent Dr. Suzanne Scallion. “We know that it’s out of reach for this year, but there will be a day that a grant or funds from the federal or state government will come to us and say ‘we’ve been wanting to do this project, this building for a couple of years now, and it’s time’.”
“We owe it to the citizens of this city, we owe it to the staff, we owe it to kids in the city, to know what it is that we need to be doing,” Scallion said.
Scallion said that the $6.5 million requested is higher than the level service in place this year, and that the list of requests will again be presented at the April 14 budget meeting.
“These are real needs for our schools in the 21st century,” said committee member Cindy Sullivan. “It’s a very comprehensive list. It’s computer licenses, it’s Imagine Learning, it’s things we’re already doing…”
“We have a lot of schools in this district — two high schools, two middle schools, nine elementary schools, plus Fort Meadow — and I don’t think the general public realizes how much money it takes to run (these schools),” she said. “It looks like we have allotted $54 million, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg of what we need to educate our kids.”
“Every year when I was a principal, we would develop a budget of our needs and present it to the superintendent, and it would get whittled down to fit into the budget,” said Rix after the meeting. “This is the first time in years that we’re bringing it forward to the public. Now in the budget process for next week, we’re going to incorporate whatever we can of that into it by moving and balancing.”
“There are still going to be needs out there,” he said. “Some of it’s in the MSBA proposal, others we’re looking at grants, some maintenance, but I want to keep it as a live document to knock it off.”
“It’s just going to make the school committee aware of what the needs are,” he said. “If we don’t bring it forward in this process, they’ll never get to see all of it, and it ties into where some of their priorities are.
“It’s nice to talk about volunteers and people donating. It’s only one avenue through our budget to meet our needs and we’ve got to change that in the future.”
