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Dr. David Hopson |
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January 29, 2007 The school committee continues to move forward in developing a district budget within mandated time lines, trying to balance student needs with existing resources, and supporting the $45 million investment our towns have in our school buildings. As I’ve noted before, this is a difficult process given the lack of information regarding state aid, but one that must move forward regardless. Two important events happened last week: the administrative team determined the most important priorities to present to the school committee, and the school committee determined which of these priorities they would support in developing the budget. The administrative priorities were presented at four levels—a level service plus additional levels of restored positions or new requests. We also included $75,000 in extraordinary maintenance requests in the priority list, moved forward from the Capital Improvement Advisory Committee (a group of local residents looking to ensure that our capital investment is maintained). The extraordinary maintenance list covers areas such as recoating the middle school roof over the next 2 to 3 years so that we can avoid paying five or six times as much to replace the roof covering. Soon, the School Committee will address a request to establish a stabilization account for capital improvement to enable the district to carefully plan funding for major capital repairs and improvement over a course of several years, rather than need to borrow large sums of money on an emergency basis. The school committee voted to support a budget increase of just under 7% over this year’s budget. This budget will maintain current services, add some essential services to the district, and broaden student opportunities, but will not resolve all of the problem areas that administrators identified within the district. I feel very comfortable with the balance that the school committee struck between needs and resources and hope that the state will find some additional funds for schools in the next few months that will ameliorate the impact that this increase has on town budgets. As we continue with the process, specific details of this budget will emerge. Briefly, some of the essential priority items included in the developing budget are: a middle school behavioral program, providing a ninth grade course in technology/engineering to meet MCAS requirements, distance learning opportunities for the high school, phasing in a ‘core’ reading program for K-6th grades, increasing student supplies by $5/student, restoring some secretarial time in the middle/high school complex, and providing some required additional support for both athletics and the after-school program. The public hearing on the proposed budget will be held on March 7th, beginning at 7:30 p.m. in the middle/high school performing arts center. While public input is welcome by the school committee anytime, the public hearing is an evening set aside to exclusively deal with budgetary issues and the development of a budget to present to the towns. I encourage everyone to educate themselves regarding the fiscal year 2008 budget and then attend this meeting to share their opinions. ### |
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