Charged by the Finance Committee with cutting $274,000 from next year’s proposed school budget, the School Committee debated how to make those cuts for well over an hour Monday night. The schools had asked for about $14.4 million as their part of the town’s omnibus budget for fiscal 2021. The cuts FinCom sought are about 2% of the amount the schools had requested.
School Superintendent Linda Dwight and Business Manager Aziz Aghayev presented the School Committee with a list of possible cuts that included giving up two teaching positions, one at Hildreth Elementary School and one at Bromfield. At HES, the loss of a teacher would mean reducing the number of class sections at one grade from four to three, with a corresponding increase in class size. At Bromfield, no replacement would be hired for the retiring drama teacher, so drama would disappear as an academic subject and become an after-school activity.
“There’s some thought out there that you can cut $270,000 without impacting staff,” Dwight said, “but there is absolutely, positively no way.”
Other cuts on the list include reducing professional development funding, delaying the purchase of new elementary math books, eliminating an extra section of math at Bromfield, and dropping an interim position in special education. Some old textbooks at Bromfield would not be replaced, nor would a broken copier at HES. And there would be no increased hours of tech support for the numerous electronic devices at both schools.
As another option, Dwight and Aghayev proposed making just a subset of the cuts on the list, for a total reduction in spending of $108,500. The schools would then draw an additional $161,500 from the Devens fund reserve balance to reduce the schools’ “ask” from the town by $270,000, close to the $274,000 FinCom had specified.
The Devens fund is money that MassDevelopment pays the Harvard School District to educate children who live in Devens. The schools are using about $1.5 million of that money for both operating and capital expenses this fiscal year. But over the years the contract with MassDevelopment has been in effect, the district has also saved about $1.4 million for emergencies and major unforeseen expenses.
Dwight advocated drawing down the Devens account balance to avoid some or even all of the cuts. “None of those [cuts] is ideal,” she said, “and it could definitely be argued they take us below level service. So do we look at spending down the Devens money that’s in reserve? Eventually it would exacerbate the situation, but it allows us to keep what we feel has been a reasonable budget.” Furthermore, Dwight suggested, having the Devens fund reserve balance has allowed the town to avoid some difficult but necessary conversations about costs. “It’s hard to keep asking the town [for money] when we have that reserve there,” she said.
School Committee Chair John Ruark disagreed, saying he was concerned about taking more money from the Devens fund. He also pointed out that FinCom might not be satisfied with that approach. “Saying we’re just going to draw down the $270 [thousand] from Devens is not in the spirit they are looking for,” Ruark said.
Committee member SusanMary Redinger supported a middle course. “There’s a value in having some reserve there for unforeseen expenses,” she said. She suggested setting a level for the Devens balance, rather than drawing it down to zero over the next few years.
With those three positions as the background for debate, discussion ranged over ways to reduce the budget in different areas. Among the suggestions were reducing the number of tablets and laptops for teachers; buying only one year’s supplies for the elementary math program instead of buying three years’ worth at once (even though buying supplies one year at a time is more expensive in the long run); reducing the number of full-time administrators; and cutting back on the budget for utilities.
Aghayev, the business manager, raised a more basic question about a level-service budget, pointing out that Harvard could fall behind while other schools change with the times. “What is level service?” he asked. “Is it to keep using textbooks till 20 years after today, if everyone else is not using textbooks, but we still are? Is that level service? As things progress, like technology improves, but we stay where we are, I don’t think that is level service.”
Ruark, Redinger, and other members also pointed out that, even if both the school and the town make all FinCom’s requested cuts, the proposed omnibus budget would still require asking voters for a Proposition 2 1/2 override.
At the end of the long discussion, the committee voted unanimously to send the school administration’s original list of possible school cuts to FinCom, along with a supporting narrative that makes clear the School Committee does not consider a budget with these cuts to be one that provides level service in the schools. School Committee members also wanted to share with FinCom the debate over using Devens funds to cover those cuts in hopes of reaching a consensus.
