Lynn School Committee public budget hearing on tap tonight

LYNN – The fate of the Ford School Annex and the jobs of more than 100 School Department employees will be decided tonight as the Lynn School Committee will hold a public hearing prior to voting on its fiscal year 2010 budget.The $1.7 million plan features sweeping cuts across the department that, along with the Ford Annex, target shops at Lynn Vocational and Technical Institute and personnel at every school.Facing level state funding and a drop in revenue, new Superintendent Catherine Latham and her budget team were saddled with the task of running the department on depleted resources and a $4.5 million funding gap.As a result, the team built the budget from the bottom up, slicing positions and programs in several areas.Since presenting a final plan last month, the situation has become even worse for the city as stimulus money promised by Gov. Deval Patrick has yet to surface and the state’s fiscal year 2010 budget took an additional $2.5 million in funding away from the city.Protesters from the Ford School have been out in full force since news broke that the annex would close, but school officials say there is no way around closing the school unless the city sacrifices another program elsewhere.”Unless you want to merge or close two or three of our elementary schools I don’t see how this can be avoided,” said Mayor and School Committee Chairman Edward J. Clancy Jr. “If you do that you will have class sizes that are huge and really at an unacceptable level.”Clancy says he expects to see some folks from the Ford School speaking out at the public hearing, but said unless someone comes forward with a funding source or a real idea to save money elsewhere, the plan to close the school will stay.”Hopefully you will have a couple of people who want to come up and speak for or against what we are doing,” Clancy said of the hearing. “But I expect the budget to be passed by a similar vote (to the 5-2 vote by the committee to hold a public hearing).”School Committee member John Ford says that while closing the Ford Annex is painful, the overall budget is the best the school department could do given the dire financial situation facing the city.”No matter who you talk to someone is going to have an opinion on what we are doing. But I have spent probably more time on this budget than any other and I feel like with the cards that we were dealt, this is the best we could come up with,” he said. “Unless something dramatically changes or the mayor or Dr. Latham comes forward with a change prior to the meeting, I don’t expect to vote on anything different.The public hearing will take place at 6 p.m. in the Lynn Vocational and Technical Institute Annex Building at 90 Commercial St. Any member of the public can speak for or against the budget.Following the hearing at 7 p.m. the committee will hold its final regularly scheduled meeting. The committee will vote on the budget at the meeting of a whole as well as discuss several other agenda issues, including an update on stimulus funds.