WESTFIELD -Chairman of the Westfield School Committee’s Finance Subcommittee Kevin Sullivan praised the efforts of Director of Technology and Business Services Ronald Rix, who presented the proposed school budget for the upcoming fiscal year at last week’s City Council meeting.
“I felt the presentation you made to the City Council last Thursday was very smooth and cohesive and I think we made some real progress,” said Sullivan. “I thought the budget presentation was very well done. Hopefully we can make some headway in some of the issues that they (the city council) brought up.”
Rix replied that it was the result of a “great team approach” and that it went “much better than I expected.”
Westfield Superintendent Dr. Suzanne Scallion took the opportunity to make a clarification regarding special education spending.
“The press did misreport the concept of cost in special education,” she said. “They indicated that we were spending an additional $2 million plus in our special education costs. In fact, we achieved a cost avoidance of over $2 million by bringing our special ed programs into the district.”
Scallion referred to the report as “completely a 180” from what the district has achieved.
“We have achieved a cost avoidance of $2.4 million this fiscal year by bringing some exemplary programs into the city to serve our own kids, and we’re very proud of that,” Scallion said. “Cost avoidance is a very important concept, because we could be looking at a whole lot more damage in the budget if we were looking at that bill in addition to the numbers we’re already running.”
Other topics of discussion Monday included bus transportation, and the issue of empty buses.
Scallion informed the committee that she had utilized bus data collected by Westfield High Principal Jonathan Carter and District Transportation Supervisor Pamela Kotarski and drafted a letter she hopes to send to parents of high school students regarding transportation.
“What we found was a number of them (buses) were running with very low numbers,” she said. “(The letter) asks about the frequency in which their kids would be riding the bus, with the option to decline transportation services and with a way to opt back in, if you will.”
“Based on what I observed in the parking lot at the high school, we have a lot of kids who are driving and driving their friends,” Scallion said.
Scallion said she is aware of the district’s contract with Westfield’s Lecrenski Brothers Inc., provides three tiered regular education transportation at almost $2 million annually.
The three-tiered system provides transportation for high, middle, and elementary school pupils.
Scallion said that she is talking with Kotarski about possibly using the buses on a “different third tier.”
“We’re not forcing anyone. It’s a friendly letter just saying, ‘if your child isn’t going to use the bus, please let us know so we can take them off our list.'” Scallion said.
