It’s estimated that the Governor’s Budget (House I) will be out this week. Given the additional 9C reductions that Governor Baker enacted, and the fact that he did not rescind the cuts to regional transportation reimbursement at that time, the furloughs that teachers and administrators accepted in order to avoid laying off staff will be implemented. What this means to parents and students is that there will be no parent/teacher conferences on Monday, March 9. Thus there will be no school for students on Monday, March 9 and no conferences for parents on that day. Based upon teacher input, parents with concerns may be able to schedule time with teachers outside of the March 9th date and, as always, teachers respond to phone calls and emails regarding activities in their classes.
With a potential shortfall of $1.5 million in revenue for the coming school year, the budget process is proving very interesting. As we move forward, the administration and school committee are balancing student needs with town financial capabilities in order to strike some sort of balance that continues an excellent education without negatively impacting tax rates to an extent that reduces the towns’ abilities to provide services. At this point, the most likely scenario to save significantly without greatly impacting student educational opportunities is to look at expanding our elementary schools to be PreK-sixth grade. While nothing is cast in stone at this time, there will be the annual budget hearing on March 4 in the Gateway Performing Arts Center at which time the school committee will take input from the public on budgeting for next year. Information regarding the budget and the budgeting process are on the district’s website and provide an excellent overview of the items that are being reviewed in developing a budget. You may also post questions about the budget (or other items) on the Superintendent’s Blog.
In developing information for the school committee, several interesting pieces of information have surfaced. The first is that, despite cries over the years that the district is bankrupting the towns, the reality is that (based upon self-reported financial reports provided to the Department of Revenue from our towns) the actual percentage of the total town budgets spent on education (both Gateway and Vocational) has actually decreased by over 5 percent from 2009/10 to 2013/14. This despite an increase in vocational costs, an increase in the cost of utilities and other fixed costs, and no layoffs of teachers during this time frame. The second item of interest relates to the changes in the district over the last decade. The number of enrolled students has dropped by 21%, the total number of staff has decreased by 4.3% (due in great part to adding behavioral and specialty programming to meet student needs within the district and increasing security), the number of teachers has dropped by 11% (due to attrition) and the number of administrators has decreased by 31% (due to changes in the elementary and middle schools and the consolidation of district level administrative positions). We’ve also seen an overall decrease in the district’s budget of $290,816 that has yielded an aggregate decrease in town assessments of $73,081 from FY’10 to FY’15, proving that a dollar decrease in the budget does not equate to a dollar decrease in town assessments because of changes in state support for education.
