WESTFIELD – The City Council vote to adopt Mayor Daniel M. Knapik’s 2014 fiscal year could be felt in the South Middle School Auditorium last night as nearly 200 residents, school and city employees breathed a sigh of relieve and burst into applause.
“It has been an enormously stressful process,” School Superintendent Suzanne Scallion said this morning.
That stress seized the School Department last Friday morning when it was reported in The Westfield News that the Finance Committee had slashed nearly $1.5 million from the budget last Thursday night. The largest hit was to the School Department, $685,000, as the committee applied a 1.25 percent across-the-board cut to hundreds of line items.
Scallion and administrators had already reconciled $535,000 difference between their “budget of need” and funding allowed by Knapik, sending out layoff notices and leaving positions open because of retirements unfilled.
Scallion had prepared contingencies if the Finance Committee cut was approved by the full City Council. Those contingencies included cutting 20 percent of school supplies, a revamped athletic schedule which only included league games, eliminating after school clubs and activities, cancelling a secondary math program contract for new books and instituting a hiring freeze.
“After already enduring the difficulties of non-renewals and layoffs, the last-minute nature of the proposed cut was a tremendous stressor and disruption to the staff,” Scallion said this morning. “Fortunately, the misunderstanding regarding the Mayor’s budget was resolved.”
“The impact of cuts year after year disrupts the great momentum that our schools are trying to maintain,” Scallion said. “Between the staff reductions and transfers, it is very difficult to maintain a positive school climate. And we know through research that it is a positive school climate created by staff leads to higher levels of motivation and achievement by our students.”
Scallion, who spoke with several City Councilors prior to the budget workshop session, said that she never anticipated the $685,000 cut proposed by the Finance Committee, but was relieved when that cut was rejected last night.
“It makes for great theater, but it has been devastating for staff morale,” Scallion said.
