By Kathy Kurtz Ferrari
Staff Writer
2/4/10
The School Committee may have to eliminate more than 24 full-time school positions if the School Department doesn’t receive the full funding it is requesting from Annual Town Meeting. The proposed $35,533,107 budget, which was approved by the committee at its Nov. 3 meeting, would allow services to remain level at the town’s six public schools. School administration officials laid out their projections for potential cuts Jan. 26 as the finance subcommittee made a PowerPoint presentation. School Business Administrator Matthew Gillis guided the presentation, laying out a budget prior to an announcement from state officials detailing exact figures for the state aid. Assuming that the budget will be level-funded, as indicated to the school administration from talks with the Warrant Committee, the presentation projected cuts in order to submit a balanced budget. But there still is much uncertainty as to what the final figures would be.
“It’s becoming more and more apparent that no one is terribly sure about what that baseline is,” said School Committee and finance subcommittee member Glenn Pavlicek.
Assuming level funding, the school administration anticipates a budget of $32,976,036. The budget for the current fiscal year included an October Special Town Meeting reduction of $110,591 from the original appropriation of $33,086,627.
The figure sought for this year’s budget includes State Fiscal Stabilization Funds, or SFSF, of $1,123,447, part of a one-time grant given to cover fiscal years 2010 and 2011. According to the presentation, the administration is charged with cutting costs equaling $1,279,115.
Some of the SFSF grant was used this year and some is available for next year. Along with other stimulus funds earmarked for special education, the funds were appropriated to cover two budget years, and the administration stated they have been conservative with the money. There is a carry-over balance of $538,856 left from the grant for FY 2011.The shortfall would be that much greater if those funds were not in place.
“With the grant this year, we were conservative,” School Superintendent Mary Gormley said. “We recognize the situation in the town, and we really were conservative with that money. When we have to go to the level-service budget, that money would have been much bigger if we weren’t carrying over [funds from the grant].”
She presented details of a working document describing reductions to the staff and services in the public schools, and the impact those cuts would make.
“These are really hard decisions. …We’ve gone through this before,” Gormley said, as she began to layout the ramifications of any possible cuts. “Our first priority was teachers in the classroom, in front of the students.”
The projected cuts totaled 24.4 full-time positions, which included:
• The director of guidance, and one full-time teacher in the family and consumer studies department, at Milton High School.
• One full-time classroom core teacher and the assistant principal position at Pierce Middle School
• A number of cuts at the elementary level. Those include the assistant principal position at Glover Elementary School; a 0.6 reduction in a specialist position, affecting art, music, library or Future Problem Solving; two French Immersion classroom teachers; one full-day kindergarten teacher; one language-based special education teacher; a 0.5 reduction in a pre-school staff position; and a 0.1 elimination in an ACE teacher, eliminating the art enrichment program for fifth-graders.
Other reductions would have a system-wide effect, including reducing all full-day kindergarten aides to half-time, a reduction of 7.1 positions; reducing a data-systems specialist to half-time; eliminating five classroom aides; a reduction by 0.6 of ELE/English teacher position; a 0.5 reduction in the registrar position; and one custodian position.
“These cuts will have a profound and negative impact on students. …I love my job but this was, today, the worst day,” Gormley said about informing staff members Jan. 26 who would be affected by the cuts. “I had to sit down with these people. People have lives and people are vested in the Milton public schools. And after sitting down with these people, this was life-changing for them today.”
The Warrant Committee will present its recommendations for all the town department budgets for the Annual Town Meeting in May. As soon as figures are available from the state, questions can be answered regarding firm budget numbers.
Budget projections and materials are available on the school Web site at www.miltonps.org.