K-6 Superintendent: SACC Should Remain School Program

Norfolk Superintendent Don LeClerc said this week he is hoping to find a way to avoid privatizing the before-school and after-school program of the town’s elemen­tary schools, even though the program is losing money. As of the end of February, the School Age Child Care program was losing about $14,000, though school of­ficials hope the deficit will decrease as more payments come in. LeClerc has cited a couple of reasons for the decline in revenue.

One is that the 175 students in the program aren’t at­tending as often as students have in previous years.

“The economy is clearly a factor here. While the num­ber of students has remained relatively stable, the num­ber of days/sessions they are attending as dropped off,” LeClerc wrote in an email message earlier this week.

In an interview Tuesday, LeClerc also said that the program’s cost has increased dramatically this school year because two women who work for it have been out on maternity leave, significantlyincreasing the school district’s costs.

SACC, as the program is known, increased fees slight­ly for this school year, to $8 per child in the morning ($7 for siblings) and $18.50 per child in the afternoon ($16.50 for siblings). “Even with that increase, it hasn’t helped at all,” LeClerc told the Norfolk School Committee during the committee meeting Wednesday, March 3. Last week he said he was considering contracting with an outside provider to run the program. “It would still be site-based, it would still be before and after school, but we would have no responsibility whatsoever,” LeClerc said. SACC would then once again become a money-maker for the school district, LeClerc said last week. “I know it’s a great service to the parents. If we do make a decision to privatize it, they would still have be­fore and after-school activities. Again, the headaches would all be off of the Norfolk school system, along with the collecting the bills, putting out the bills, collecting the payments. Those wouldn’t be responsibilities of ours any more. Plus we’d be getting — at least the way it’s been broached with me — is we’d be getting a monthly income on top of that,” LeClerc said during the School Commit­tee meeting last week.

LeClerc told the School Committee’s Budget Subcom­mittee this past Tuesday that the school district’s pro­gram fees are lower than what the YMCA charges for a similar program, and that Norfolk’s program is better because it uses teachers. “So really people in this town are getting a very high-end product for a lower fee,” LeClerc told the Budget Subcommittee.

Tadd Hassett, the school district’s business consul­tant, told the Budget Subcommittee that the school dis­trict reduced the SACC staff by two or three positions in January to reduce cost. In an interview toward the tail end of the meeting, LeClerc said he’d like to maintain SACC as a school dis­trict program. LeClerc noted that the before-school-and-after-school program in recent years ran a surplus, helping to fund Latin instruction after school, violin instruction, and preparation for the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System test.

“So they gave, so it’s time for a little reciprocal favor,” LeClerc told the Budget Subcommittee.

“I’d like to see if we can make sure that they stay sol­vent,” said Beth Gilbert, the School Committee chairman, though she added that SACC has been “an excellent pro­gram.”