The School Committee agreed unanimously Saturday to cut $245,000 from its fiscal year 2009 budget, its 70 percent share of a $350,000 townwide budget cut approved at a meeting with the Board of Selectmen and Finance Committee. Most of the school-budget cuts will be freezes to spending that can be deferred, such as supplies, technology, and professional development, school board member Virginia Justicz told the three boards at an emergency meeting Saturday. Personnel actions such as reduced hours for tutors will be implemented immediately, she said. No layoffs of teachers are planned.
Justicz said the school board wants to reserve the possibility of restoring some of the cuts later in the year if actual local aid and local receipts reductions turn out to be less than $350,000. She said that the areas to be cut have been underfunded in recent years and that further cuts adversely affect programs. “Of course,” she said, “if [cuts to the town’s revenue receipts] turn out to be more than $350,000, we know we’ll have to come up with additional cuts.”
Schools Superintendent Tom Jefferson said that any such restoration would be made only with the consensus of the three boards.
Questioned after the meeting, Jefferson said that very few of the budget reductions would be “sustainable,” that is, cutting them now does not mean they would not be needed next year. Chairman Stu Sklar had said that cutting programs and their teachers in the middle of the school year would be disruptive, with potentially significant damage to student experiences, so the goal is to get to the end of the school year by finding savings elsewhere.
Following last week’s Wednesday meeting at which the three boards agreed to slash the fiscal 2009 budget by $350,000, the School Committee met Saturday to hear Jefferson’s recommendations as to how the school portion of the cuts could be made. Jefferson presented a memo enumerating two categories of possible cuts. Totaling $169,500, the first category included savings already accomplished by an earlier spending freeze; savings due to lower fuel costs and energy-use reductions; cuts in maintenance and supply budgets; reductions in hours for aides and tutors; elimination of a long-term substitute position supporting special education cases; reductions in professional development; reductions in central office and clerical support; and reductions in custodial staff. Jefferson described these as a “peanut butter” approach, spreading cuts over several areas to minimize impacts on any one area or any one student group. Thermostats at Bromfield, the elementary school, and the school central office were lowered this week from 69 degrees to 64 degrees as a way to reduce energy consumption and cut costs.
The second category, totaling $75,500, was described as having more significant impact, especially in light of a recent history of underfunding, Jefferson said, and included textbooks and media at Bromfield and library supplies at the elementary school. It also included additional staffing reductions for library, community education, and Math Plus tutoring, as well as other partial reductions in student services and preschool therapies. The second category was rounded out with further deferral of technology spending (hardware and software), increases in fundraising, and implementation of new fees, including a possible $100 permit for student parking.
The School Committee took no votes at its meeting prior to the Saturday afternoon meeting of the three committees, but members expressed appreciation to Jefferson for having given them a thorough and prioritized list of cuts that could be applied while maintaining continuity of programs and services for the remainder of the school year. During the caucus within the meeting of the three boards, Sklar polled the committee, and its members unanimously agreed to make the budget cuts.
