K-6 Budget: Fees Up, Services Down

Norfolk’s elementary superintendent is recommend­ing doubling the current $90-a-year school bus fee, adding a $10-a-month music fee, increasing full-day kindergarten fees, and eliminating a school psychologist and professional development stipends for teachers if the elementary schools get no budget increase in the coming school year.

The Norfolk School Committee hasn’t voted to formally recommend a budget yet, but Superintendent Don LeClerc presented budget details for the 2010-2011 school year this past Wednesday night.

LeClerc is recommending a so-called “level services” bud­get that would keep educational offerings about where they are this school year, which would require a 3.56 percent in­crease over this school year’s budget, or about $350,000.

But selectmen this week said they expect budgets through­out town are unlikely to increase, and they are pressing for department heads to come up with a scenario that allows for 4 percent reductions in their spending from the current fiscal year.

LeClerc said the $350,000 in reduction to the elementary school expenses would come from the following areas:

1) $100,000 in federal stimulus money (offsetting an ex­pected loss in so-called “circuit breaker” funds from the state for special education

2) $20,000 in music fees “If we instituted a music fee of $10 per month — which is an outstanding rate given what John Fouracre provides and the talent that he puts out — that would bring in $20,000. Now again, these figures are a little bit on the low side. If everyone paid, it would be $25,000. I’ll just give this as one example. But we’re building in there some students won’t be able to pay. We don’t want to not have the opportunities for students who can’t afford to pay, or may have multiple children in there, to not work out some type of fee schedule with them, like we do with the buses,” LeClerc said during the School Committee meeting this past Wednesday night.

3) $30,000 from doubling the school bus fee from $90 per child to $180 per child

The current $90-per-child school bus fee (which has cer­tain exceptions) applies to students who live within two miles of the school they attend. (State law requires that school dis­tricts

provide busing free of charge for students who live more than two miles away from their school.) During the 2008-2009 school year, the bus fee brought in $32,700, LeClerc said, and during the 2009-2010 school year it has brought in $32,500. 4) $19,000 from increasing the full-day kindergarten fee to $320 a month from $300 a month now. That would still be under the $400-a-month cap set by the state, LeClerc said. 5) $28,000 in professional development stipends for teachers

6) $45,000 for eliminating one full-time teacher’s posi­tion “You can lose one teacher without affecting the class size as it is right now, just because of the fluctuation in numbers. We’re graduating a class of 160, and the kindergarten coming in is 100. So it’s no reduction in anything that’s there now. It’s just those [are] how the numbers play out,” LeClerc said. 7) $84,000 for eliminating one full-time psychological and behavioral therapist LeClerc said he would add about $20,000 to the budget to add a half-time guidance counselor position to make up for the loss of the therapist position. 8) $30,000 for eliminating a special education position that is equivalent to 0.6 of a full-time position 9) $14,000 for eliminating a lead teacher stipend

LeClerc said if he has to ac­tually reduce the elementary schools’ budget by 5 percent, he would have to cut another $500,000 from his budget re­quest. “I don’t know how to say it except that it’s out of this world,” LeClerc said. “… The only way you can possibly get to that is by just eliminating another nine or 10 teaching positions.”

In rough terms, he said he’d eliminate four reading teacher positions and one read­ing

tutor position, saving about $300,000.

He also said he’d likely elimi­nate four additional full-time teaching positions, which would save about $200,000. Class siz­es would increase to anywhere from 23 to 26.8 per class. (They are closer to 20 now.)

“This is Armageddon sce­nario,” said School Committee chairman Beth Gilbert. “I mean, this is not anything anybody wants to do.” LeClerc asked the School Committee to vote to recom­mend a 3.56 percent increase for a level-services budget, but the School Committee held off.

The stage is set for what could be seesaw negotiations with the town’s Board of Selectmen and Advisory Board that would de­termine what recommended budget goes to Town Meeting and ultimately gets approved by the voters. Many observers expect that selectmen will propose a tax hike through an operating budget override of Proposition 2 _, the state law that limits increases in a town’s tax levy to 2.5 percent plus allowances for new growth. If approved, that could provide more money for all town bud­gets, including the elementary schools. But the non-override budgets are key, since if voters reject the operating budget override then the non-override budgets will go into effect.

Negotiations among town of­ficials are affected by how much local aid the state Legislature ap­proves

this spring for Norfolk. Numbers are far from certain, but early indications are worri­some for local officials.

Gilbert noted that state of­ficials are suggesting that local officials should prepare for a 5 percent reduction in state fund­ing for local public education (known as Chapter 70 funds) and other local forms of local aid. “I know that the people at the town side who are trying to bal­ance budgets are sort of appalled by what they’re getting from the state level, in terms of what our expectations can be. I know that the latest numbers that have been sent out through the De­partment

of Ed and through the workshops that they’ve done are you can expect a minus 5 percent on your Chapter 70 funds and all of your local aid funds. When you hear those kinds of things, it is really scary. Because as we all know, local revenues aren’t re­ally

going up,” Gilbert said. “So as much as I’d like to say we’re going to fight tooth and nail for that level-services budget, I think realistically where I really want to try to draw the line is at the level-funded budget. We can’t go below that. But are there ways we can mitigate those cuts, so that we don’t have to make those cuts that Don has recom­mended,

but that we find some other way.”

But School Committee mem­ber Ross Gilleland said school officials should press for the 3.56 increase for a so-called level-ser­vices budget. “I would say personally I don’t want to go below level ser­vices, and I would like to send that message,” Gilleland said. “I’d draw it at level services if I thought we had a shot, frankly,” Gilbert said. School Committee member Marie Zullo said it makes sense to stump for a level-services budget whether school officials can get it or not. “While it may be unlikely that we’ll get a level-services budget, I think that we do need to argue for it as vehemently as we can. Also, be­cause the community needs to have a better un­derstanding, if we don’t get level services what is that going to be. If we just push for level-funded, that’s all they’re going to see. I think they really need to have an understanding, so that this way people can do their own lobbying to town offi­cials,” Zullo said. A level-funded budget would require cuts in educational services because expenses are expected to go up about $350,000 next school year. Most of that figure, about $325,000, is from teacher salary increases.

Gilbert acknowledged that a level-funded budget would require services cuts that school officials fund unpalatable.

“It’s undoubted that if we go for a level-fund­ed budget, if that were what we were to end up with, that’s a huge cut in programs, and that’s a huge cut on top of years of really big cuts.

“And obviously you can’t continue that pro­cess forever without losing things you must have,” Gilbert said.

Ellen Horton, president of the Norfolk Teachers Association, the teachers union that represents Norfolk elementary teachers, picked up on that theme, noting that in recent years the elementary schools have lost Spanish and health instruction, among other things.

“The elementary schools’ budget has been being hit for a lot longer than this recession has gone on. So if we were only hit the last few years, it wouldn’t be as deep right now. To talk about a level-services, or even taking a little bit of a cut from that, would be much more doable than it is today. But because we’ve been hit for a series of years prior to it being really bad, there is nothing left,” Horton said. “I mean, we’re treading water as it is.” Annual Town Meeting is scheduled to begin Tuesday, May 18.