By GAYLA CAWLEY
SWAMPSCOTT — Parents are not happy that the $275,000 school budget deficit could threaten free full-day kindergarten.
Under a scenario where the budget deficit is not eliminated, school officials are exploring an option to transition full-day kindergarten to a half-day program at no charge. Parents would have to pay tuition for the full-day program.
Katie Holt, who recently moved to Swampscott, and has a daughter who will start kindergarten in the fall, said the idea of going from full-day kindergarten to a half day bothers her in many ways. She wondered what kind of burden that would place on the first grade teachers if their students didn’t learn enough in the previous grade.
Claire Beckett said she moved to the seaside town about a year ago partly for the good school system. She got emotional at the thought of losing full day-kindergarten for her 2½-year-old child.
“As a working mother, it feels incredibly regressive to lose full-day service for me,” Beckett said. “We can do better than that.”
Parents such as Holt and Beckett spoke at a public hearing for the FY18 school budget, held during a school committee meeting on Wednesday.
But officials say cutting kindergarten is a last resort and that they’ve been scrambling for weeks to come up with ways to eliminate the initial projected $1.5 million deficit. Through some cuts and fee increases, the deficit has been reduced to $275,000.
“When we had the $1.5 million gap, we were faced with bad choices, all of them being bad choices,” said Superintendent Pamela Angelakis. “And it came down to, if we need several hundred thousands of dollars, what is the least of the bad choices? That’s where kindergarten tuition came in (to) this discussion. Do I want to go there? I absolutely do not. Do I believe it’s the right thing to do? I absolutely do not. And given that the gap is getting smaller and smaller, my hope is that we don’t have to go there. It would set our district back tremendously.”
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School Business Administrator Evan Katz presented a $30.49 million budget to a room of more than 100 residents. After revolving funds and grants are taken into account, the school district budgeted for $28,272,500 in town allocation. But the town is only allocating an additional $750,000 from last year’s amount, or $27,997,500. Therein lies the $275,000 budget deficit.
In mid-December, school officials were faced with a darker situation. Before Angelakis and her administrative team started cutting into the budget, the projected FY18 school budget exceeded available revenue by $1.5 million.
To get that gap down to a more reasonable amount, Katz said there have been revenue increases of $240,000, personnel transition savings of $200,000, program reductions of $314,000 and the $300,000 budgeted for the unknown amount of students who may join the district and require special education services has been eliminated.
One increase will be in athletic user fees and is projected to save the district $80,000. As a result, each student will be paying an additional $75 to play each sport. Currently, athletic user fees only cover about 30 percent of the cost to run the school district’s sports programs. With the increase, Katz said the fees would cover 40 percent of the cost. The district covers the rest of the cost.
“The idea that athletic user fees are only covering 30 percent of the actual cost, while we’re talking about cutting full-day kindergarten is something I cannot support,” said Amy O’Connor, school committee vice-chair.
Three teacher retirements are anticipated, which saved $100,000. An unfilled technical director position has been eliminated, saving another $100,000.
For program reductions, Katz said about four additional teacher positions are expected to be eliminated, along with the administrative assistant position in the METCO program. The Hadley Elementary School special education job is being cut, as the student population there doesn’t require one, he said.
Elementary health will merge into the physical education program. The middle school red, white and you class is getting the ax. Mandarin is switching to online only.
“I think that it’s important to notice this is going to have a ripple effect on the world language program,” said Jessica-Gahm-Diaz, head of the school world language department.
Gahm-Diaz predicted larger class sizes for French and Spanish, with Mandarin potentially getting phased out. With potential class sizes of 30 students, classes would be unable to go to the language lab, which only has 28 computers.
Another large piece of reducing the deficit, Katz said, was eliminating the $300,000 set aside for students who may come into the district and need out of district services for special education. He said officials are pretty comfortable with the money set aside for students the district is currently educating, and can’t afford to set aside any money for students who may move into the district in the next 18 months.
“We have weathermen who can’t predict the forecast and we’re expected to predict special education students 16 months ahead of time,” Angelakis said. “To add an additional $300,000 into our budget for unknown costs is ridiculous and it’s the way we’ve been doing it in the district for years. So, that is a huge change and one that I’m in support of.”
Katz said as a backup, school officials are recommending that the town fund a special education stabilization fund, which would be money set aside for students requiring those services who may come into the school district. The fund would require a Town Meeting vote.
Despite the work done to close the deficit, school officials are saying the $750,000 increase in town allocation is not even enough to cover their teacher- and staff-anticipated salary increases. In December, Katz projected there would be $960,000 in projected salary increases for school employees and teachers. He said officials are trying to raise people’s awareness that the school committee has done a good job of negotiating favorable contracts with staff.
“I think the message I’m putting out there tonight is we need a little bit more help than that $750,000,” Angelakis said. “If that doesn’t even meet the salary requirements that we’re contractually obligated to give, how are we supposed to balance the budget?”
The school committee is scheduled to vote on the budget on Feb. 8.
Gayla Cawley can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @GaylaCawley.
