The school budget for 2014-2015 was ready for Annual Town Meeting. Warrant articles asking residents to approve repairs and improvements at the schools were in place. The warrant itself had gone to the printer. And then the Harvard schools received word of a whopping windfall that will almost certainly change the calculations.
According to Superintendent Joe Connelly, Harvard may owe the Concord Area Special Education Collaborative (CASE) a lot less than expected next year. A change in CASE’s billing practices gives Harvard a one-time credit that may save the district about $334,000 in tuition costs to the collaborative, Connelly said in an email to the Press this week.
Word of the credit first reached Superintendent Connelly on Friday, March 7, but without any firm numbers. Solid information was still lacking at the time of the School Committee’s March 10 meeting. Moreover, the whole issue had come up too late to be included on the committee’s posted agenda. As a result, the committee could not discuss the topic that night, under terms of the open meeting law.
The School Committee will undoubtedly consider the windfall when it meets next Monday, March 24. School Committee Chairwoman SusanMary Redinger emphasized that the committee expects to review the situation with other relevant town boards, including the Capital Planning and Investment Committee (CPIC) and the Finance Committee.
One possibility that the committee will likely consider, Superintendent Connelly said, is using about $269,600 of the credit to pay for the batch of school needs that now appear as warrant articles to be voted on at Town Meeting. The remainder of the one-time credit could be reserved as a buffer against future ups and downs in special education expenses.
In that case, the School Committee could ask Town Meeting to pass over the affected warrant articles. For the Bromfield School, those articles include sanding and painting exposed steel, replacing spalling concrete, expanding generator coverage, and upgrading bathroom ventilation. For Hildreth Elementary School, warrant articles relate to assessing the condition of the kindergarten wing and solving problems with the front parking lot.
Current plans call for the $115,000 cost of replacing the concrete walkways at Bromfield to be financed by a capital exclusion. Paying for it by other means would avoid the one-year increase in taxes that such measures produce.
Both the Capital Planning and Investment Committee (CPIC) and the Finance Committee met this past week and heard preliminary reports on the windfall before the School Committee could take an official stand.
“The timing of all this is to say the least challenging,” CPIC chairman and School Committee member Keith Cheveralls said in an email to the Press. He said the committee meeting cycles “simply do not conveniently mesh.”
