Swampscott principals detail impact of budget cuts

SWAMPSCOTT – Principals at Tuesday’s School Committee meeting voiced one main concern when asked how several years of budget cuts have affected their individual schools – increased class sizes.”Class size was an issue across the district,” School Committee Chairman David Whelan said. “It’s not just a problem in the elementary schools. The impact of class size was felt most on the elementary level, but it is also a problem in middle school and high school. We are at the beginning stages of trying to figure out where our attendance is going and whether it’s going to increase.”Middle School Principal Ralph Watson said the class size is relatively consistent when it comes to core academics, but class size in exploratory programs is increasing.”We’ve cut wood shop, economics and health,” he said. “So we have more students enrolling in the few exploratory programs we do have like art and music.”Watson said the cut in exploratory programming makes it impossible for the district to meet the needs of the whole child.”We are at the bare minimum of offerings,” he said. “Our (MCAS test) scores are great in math and English Language Arts but we are not meeting the needs of our students and educating the whole child. There are some students that get hooked on school because of specialty classes and we are no longer able to offer most of those. We just can’t meet the needs of the whole child with our budget.”At the high school, budget woes have had a direct impact on class sizes in elective courses and led to an increase in the amount of time students are spending in study halls.Principal Larry Murphy said the number of elective courses has been reduced and programs have been cut.”Study halls have grown 12 percent since last year because we can’t offer as many electives,” he said. “There’s a dichotomy here. We’re looking to cut back but we’re also looking to grow.”Murphy pointed out the district added Latin and Mandarin Chinese as electives two years ago and students are looking forward to taking a third year of those two languages.”At the same time we have lost a .6 (full time equivalent) language teacher,” he said. “So now we have 25 to 27 kids in our Spanish I class. It’s hard to start or sustain new initiatives when we’re cutting back on staff.”Murphy said the school only has a librarian on staff three days a week this year due to budget cuts, so volunteers from the senior center have stepped up and volunteered to staff the library the other two days.Whelan said he doesn’t believe a solution to the budget crisis could be found at the local level that would prevent further erosion of services in the district.”There are no answers in sight at the local level,” he said. “Essentially our hands are tied. Something has to change at the state level before the start of FY’10 or we’re in a lot of trouble. We’ll be looking at cutbacks in personnel and larger class sizes in every school.”