Finance Subcommittee Chairman Christine Casatelli and I appeared before the Appropriations Committee, with Committee Members Jessica Dugan and Jaime McAllister-Grande in attendance. My comments as follows:
Thank you Appropriations Chairman Mortimer, President Conn, and members of the Board of Aldermen for
inviting us to speak to the FY17 Melrose Public Schools budget as approved by
the Committee this past Tuesday, May 17th.
Supt. Taymore and her staff
began this process in October, 2015 and she presented her initial budget to the
Committee on February 23rd as a level-service budget. There was a $1M+
difference between the bottom line for that budget and what the city could
responsibly provide the schools, and we still needed to provide teachers and
materials for two additional Kindergarten classrooms and a part-time music
teacher, fund our higher-than-anticipated transportation contract, and address
stipends for co-curricular activities.
So the Supt. sharpened her
pencil and took a wide variety of actions to close the gap, including:
·
Reconfiguring
content administrators by cutting 3 of 7 Gr. 6-12 Director positions and adding
content facilitators in those areas to perform elements of the work
·
Pre-paying some
materials this year and cutting materials in other areas
·
Freezing her
salary and reducing administrator salary increases to 1%
·
Removing requests
for an elementary specialist in order to reduce current class sizes of 35
students in many art and music classes, and a technology position that would
allow the new Learning Commons to remain open longer after school
·
Pulling more
money from reserve accounts that represent rainy day monies
·
Raising fees for
Education Stations, high school athletics, and elementary music lessons, and
increasing Early Childhood Center tuitions.
·
Reducing the salary
increases we are able to offer teachers in the collective bargaining agreement
that is currently being negotiated.
·
Reducing the
recommended increase in substitute teacher pay, even as we continue to struggle
to hire subs given the low rate.
By this past Tuesday, a
balanced budget was presented to the Committee and unanimously approved.
Although unified in our vote, we articulated that this budget is no longer a
level-service budget, but one that provides the basic services needed to
provide students a quality education. Our district is high-performing; but we
share the Superintendent’s vision of a school system where “…[we] meet the
needs of every child without labeling them…[and our] staff…[has]…the capacity
and resources they need to be flexible, adaptive, and proactive for children…”
This budget will support improvement thanks to our outstanding students and
families, dedicated and hard-working staff, and the financial support of the
city, but we know needs remain, like curriculum materials, additional staff members,
increased staff training, and higher pay for educators.
The Committee is made up of
Melrose citizens and we recognize and appreciate your responsibility to provide
for all city departments, and we respect the inability of the city to provide
all the funds needed to realize our educational vision at the pace we’d like in
the interest of student achievement. We vow to continue our advocacy at the
state level to improve increased education funding for Melrose, and we ask for
your support tonight of the FY17 budget for the Melrose Public Schools.
Thank you for all the work
you do for the schools and for the city, and with that, we invite Supt. Taymore
to respond to your questions.
