KEVIN J. SULLIVAN
WESTFIELD – The School Department is preparing to lay off teachers and staff as administrators attempt to reduce payroll for the 2016 fiscal year budget which begins on July 1, 2015.
School Committee Chairman Kevin Sullivan said that the department requested $60 million for its FY16 “budget of need” but that it will go into the new fiscal year with a budget of $58,272,000 after two rounds of budget cuts and only a $110,000 increase in the Chapter 70 funding from the state.
“We were hoping that the increase in state aid would be over a million, 10 times what it is this year,” Sullivan said. “Based on that state aid number and the city’s snow and ice deficit, the mayor has to come up with around $800,000 to balance that account. We anticipate it will result in layoffs.”
“Any attrition will not be filled, so there will be no new hires,” Sullivan said.
The union contracts require that teachers and staff being laid off have to be notified by June 15, but typically more “pink slips” are sent out than the actual number of staff being cut.
School Finance Officer Ron Rix said this morning that the $60 million budget of need “replicated next year what we’ve had this year.”
“We had to cut $1,727,793 to balance the 2016 fiscal year budget, cut people and resources,” Rix said.
The personnel line item, the largest part of the school budget, is being cut by $1,490,872, while the expense line item is being cut by $236,966.
Rix said the administration is eliminating 42 positions, but anticipates that most of those jobs will be in the form of attrition and retirement which is projected to result in 24 vacancies.
“We’re looking at 18 non-renewals,” Rix said.
“What we’re getting in new state aid is the minimum, $25 per student,” Rix said.
The department has also committed about $1 million of its school choice tuition funds, circuit breaker funds, which are reimbursed by the state to the district for out-of-district special education students, grants and fees totaling $3,234,696 as budget off-sets to balance the FY2016 budget.
Sullivan said the district is also working with its unions “to see what can be done” to reduce personnel costs next years. “We’re in the middle of impact bargaining” he said, related to salary increases slated to begin July 1 with the new budget. That contract is in its final year of the three-year term and would give teachers and staff a 3 percent hike.
Sullivan said that when the contract was approved, the district anticipated that state aid would increase to the level the district received in 2009, but the anticipated state aid increases have not come out of the state government.
