Dr. Suzanne Scallion
WESTFIELD – The Finance Committee and other members of the City Council, completed the departmental review process last night with a discussion of the School Department budget, which accounts for almost half of municipal spending.
Ironically, much of the discussion was about funding not included in the $56,693,417 2015 fiscal year budget proposed by Mayor Daniel M. Knapik, a budget which was $935,455 below the level originally requested by the School Committee and millions below the funding requested by building principals and program directors when the budget process began last winter.
RON RIX
The principals were asked to submit a budget of need, funding to pull the district up from a level 3 district and attain the goal of being cited as a level 1 system. Westfield schools are assigned the level 3 status because of schools within the district whose students, for a number of reasons, perform poorly on standardized tests.
School Superintendent Suzanne Scallion said that the Longmeadow District is the highest ranked system in western Massachusetts and is only a level 2 district. There is no level 1 systems in this half of the state, Scallion said.
The principal submitted a $6.5 million request to finance the purchase of classroom technology and software programs, spending intended to improve student performance and lift the status of the system.
KEVIN J. SULLIVAN
“Of that $6.5 million requested by building principals, not a dime is in the budget before you, and the mayor cut another $1 million,” Scallion said.
The district is dedicating funding and resources to a number of in-house special education programs “for both philosophical and financial reasons,” Scallion said. The philosophical reasons are social integration and avoiding daily transportation, often longer than an hour, for special needs students placed into programs outside the district.
The financial reasons are cost avoidance of $100,000 per student tuition and transportation. The cost of initiating those special education programs to address “an emerging population” of special needs students is $2.2 million in the FY 2015 budget.
Scallion, who attended the Finance Committee review meeting
with 20 supporters, all principals, program directors, School Committee Finance Chairman Kevin Sullivan and the district’s chief financial officer Ron Rix, had a number of interesting exchanges with the council member in attendance.
At-large Councilor Dan Allie noted that state aid to Westfield, in particular lottery funding, has declined $6 million over the past five years.
“That difference has to be made up by taxpayers,” Allie said. “Last year the state had revenue above projections of over $900,000,000 (nine hundred million) and they are on track to have that again this (FY 2014) year.”
Allie said that even with budget surpluses the state continues to raid, or loot, the lottery fund, which was created specifically to provide additional revenue to cities and towns, since the Great Recession.
“The state has taken $640,000,000 from the lottery over the last five years,” Allie said. “It’s not a fair process.”
Rix said that state aid for education under Chapter 70 funding increased by a half of 1 percent this year for the 2015 budget.
Ward 5 Councilor Robert Paul is seeking to apply business standards to a number of departmental budgets, linking funding allocations to verifiable performance, in particular focusing on the three underperforming schools.
“Is the greatest investment in those areas where students are performing at a level 3 standard?” Paul asked. “Your budget needs to be aligned toward those areas where students are not performing.”
Paul also suggested Rix put together a capital improvement bond package to address computer technology, both hardware and software, and educations programming.
“Bring it forward and show how it will improve the district, the level 3 schools, and I’ll support it,” he said.
