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Dr. David Hopson |
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March 19 , 2007 On Wednesday, March 14th the Gateway School Committee adopted a budget that minimally increases services required to move the district forward and provide opportunities for student advancement. There are facets of this budget that affect elementary, middle school, and high school and increase the likelihood of student success in mastering the requirements placed upon them by MCAS tests. I would like to take this opportunity to review several items in the budget that are beyond our current level of services. The largest single cost in new items is a ‘core’ reading program for grades K-6. This item has been well researched by our staff, with many hours of time spent reviewing both the need for a core program and evaluating available programs. Our staff has selected the most appropriate program for our schools and the entire leadership team has agreed that this is a priority item. This decision is based upon a number of factors including a history of 35% of students entering 5th grade who are not reading on grade level, a failure to make the state’s required annual yearly progress (AYP) on the English language arts portion of the MCAS tests, and the mixed use of assorted materials and programs that have been put into place over the last 20 years. Research has shown that reading is a critical part of academic success for all students and that success in reading needs to be established in elementary school to have the greatest impact on student achievement. At the middle school, we have looked at the success of elementary behavioral intervention programs over the past year, reviewed the fiscal costs of sending students out of district when we don’t have appropriate ways to contain their inappropriate behaviors, and determined that if we can reduce those behaviors in the classrooms using early interventions, we will greatly increase time on task for students and teachers, which should increase student achievement. While reducing our out of district placement rate for behaviorally challenged students should potentially cover much of this cost, we still have to budget for the increased costs of providing these services. A pressing concern at the high school is that all students in the class of 2010 and beyond must pass a third MCAS test—for science/technology/engineering—to graduate. Rather than taking three exams at the end of 10th grade, our high school staff determined that it would be best to offer a 9th grade course in technology/engineering to prepare students to take the science MCAS test at the end of 9th grade. With the increased requirements in MCAS scores to qualify for graduation (the new score is 240, the old score was 220) and the requirements to have a ‘rigorous’ course of study in each area in which a score between 220 and 240 is reached, it becomes ever more important to start the graduation qualification process as early as possible. District wide we are requesting two items from the towns. The first is to establish a Capital Improvement Stabilization Account so that money may be set aside each year and ‘banked’ for two or three years to resolve capital issues that would normally require more expensive borrowing to accomplish. Items fitting this category would be recoating the middle school roof (now at the end of its warranty) to save replacing it, fixing a frost heave at the middle school and a leak under the gym entrance in the high school, and providing and hooking up generators at each school to ensure emergency back up and shelter for our communities. The second is to begin funding this account with an initial amount of $75,000. The way in which this account will be established requires that money in this account may only be used for capital improvements/repairs and must be voted out of the account by the school committee, on the recommendation of the Capital Improvement Advisory Committee (which is what the Building Committee morphed into upon completion of the building project). The reason behind these two requests is that it is much less expensive and time consuming to maintain and repair items than to replace or renovate. As just one example, coating the middle school roof for just over $100,000 gives us additional warranty time and could put off the cost (well over $600,000) of replacing said roof for years. In this instance, a penny spent on maintenance may literally save a nickel down the road. While there are other minor increases in the budget, these are the items with both the largest impact on the budget and the greatest impact on our ability to provide necessary services and support to our students. As in the past, I will be providing an overview of the budget in each town over the next two months. Budget documents are posted at www.grsd.org immediately after the school committee discusses or sees them. As always, the biggest single determining factor in how much this budget will cost the towns is what the state provides for educational aid and regional transportation reimbursement funding. The school committee, administrative team, town officials and several organizations are working to increase the amount of this aid over that which the Governor proposed in the House One Budget—with any luck we’ll see positive movement before town meetings occur. ### |
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