Further Budget Cuts Squeeze School Board

By John Voket

The Board of Education chairman believes the latest mandated budget cuts from the Legislative Council combined with stipulations from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEAC) that could affect the high school’s accreditation will require critical actions on the part of school district leaders.

“When you look at the combined cuts [since the budget was first proposed], that $859,000 in further cuts is a lot of money,” Board of Education Chairman Elaine McClure told The Bee Thursday morning. “Right now we’ve got $652,000 going to the high school, but we can’t possibly do everything NEAC said to do — we’ll do as much as we can this year.”

Ms McClure said the combination of more than three-quarters of a million dollars in budget cuts on an already lean proposal and the mandates to keep the high school’s accreditation from being put on probation have put the district’s leaders “between a rock and a hard place.”

At Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting, members heard that the $652,073 allocated for the high school would fund 3.5 new teaching positions, an assistant principal, a secretary, computer purchases, funding for another half-custodial position, and to lease modular classrooms required to alleviate overcrowding in the main building.

Following the meeting, Ms McClure said preliminary suggestions indicated a possibility that adjustments might be required in elementary level classroom sizes.

School Business Director Ron Bienkowski mentioned that teaching positions at Reed School might also be affected, but relented that the board would likely hold off on making any or all cuts until a final budget number is approved.

“The reality is all these areas are going to be touched, and then some,” Mr Beinkowski said. “We’re talking more than a million dollars [since the original superintendent’s budget was presented]. There’s not just one line item we can go to find that amount of money.”

Ms McClure said she would be looking to Superintendent Evan Pitkoff to recommend as many options as possible to effect necessary reductions, and relented that the district would likely have to make further cuts to busing and areas of the capital budget plan to reach the necessary reduction that was approved by the Legislative Council following the failure of the last budget referendum.

Since that time, petitioners have filed enough signatures with the town clerk to force a third budget referendum. The date for that machine vote will be determined next Tuesday evening at 7:30 at a town meeting scheduled to be held in the Middle School Auditorium (see related story).