Dr. David Hopson
As I write this, the weather forecasts are no longer calling for a major Nor’easter to hit us, certainly a relief after last week’s snowstorm. I know that our highway crews worked long hours to keep the roads passable and, for those who travel to the more ‘civilized’ areas of the state, you know that road conditions usually deteriorate once you leave the hilltowns. Despite our many miles of roads, many of those dirt, and small departments often using older equipment, one has to concede that these highway crews are doing a great job.
I must also commend the district’s maintenance and custodial staff for their efforts at keeping ahead of the storm and ensuring that we were able to come back the following day without any school delays. Like the town highway crews, our staff worked many hours to clean our drives, sidewalks, and parking areas over the course of the storm.
This hardworking group has also managed to do a wonderful job of maintaining our buildings and grounds while actually cutting costs over the past few years. In conjunction with all staff, our maintenance and custodial staff has been able to cut the cost of heat and utilities, reduce the cost of maintaining our campuses, and continue the move towards using ‘greener’ cleaning products and methods. This dedication to the district, our students, and their jobs certainly deserves our kudos.
As we move forward in the process of adopting and ratifying a district budget for the 2014-2015 school year (Fiscal Year 2015), I think it’s important for all of us to note that the budget is a joint effort across the district. From teachers and paraprofessionals, to cafeteria staff and custodians, to maintenance and security, the budget reflects what all of these professionals believe they need to do their job effectively.
We know that the budget is complex and consists of many interconnected items in support of providing an educational setting consistent with the needs of our students. We also know that a number of questions arise each year, which we attempt to answer in as public a method as possible. We are going to expand our efforts this year by providing information not only under the budget page on the district’s website, in “Breaking News” (our electronic newsletter), news releases to the media, the “Superintendent’s Corner” and in public forums, but also in a ‘blog’ (a web log of posts, including questions, comments, and information).
The blog, named ‘2014-2015 Budget Discussion/Q&A’ can be found under the ‘News’ dropdown menu on the district’s homepage (www.grsd.org/). I encourage people to follow this and to post questions and comments as the district continues to post budget information. We hope that this will provide a much broader and wide-ranging discussion about the budget that everyone can easily follow. As always, you can also contact your school administrator, your town’s school committee member, attend a school committee meeting, and provide your questions/comments to ‘[email protected]’, in addition to posting items on the new blog. Our hope is that the more folks know about the budget, the more understandable the budget process will be and the easier it will be to vote knowledgably at our annual town meetings.
