L-S presents options to balance FY10 budget
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The Lincoln-Sudbury Regional School District is facing a $1.2 million gap in a $24.79 million budget request, which takes into account a possible reduction in state aid, officials said at a budget symposium last night.
To eliminate the gap, the district is considering several solutions, including cutting roughly 17 teachers, administration and support staff that would not all add up to layoffs, but rather time cutbacks to retain some of those positions. Other reductions in supplies and expenses and athletics and activities would also be made.
About 40 people attended the symposium at the L-S auditorium, where a PowerPoint presentation was made, and residents got a chance to ask questions, and make comments and suggestions.
L-S Superintendent and Principal Dr. John M. Ritchie jokingly stressed he was not trying to imitate a CEO asking for a bailout, but just wanted to present information regarding the high school, its functions and how a budget without an override would appear.
“Our purpose is not to advocate or convince you of anything,” Ritchie said. “This is a very tough time for everybody in one way or another. There is no hidden agenda here.”
Even though the school committee must present a non-override budget, the projections represented a school that would struggle to main a status quo.
According to Director of Finance and Operations Judy Belliveau, the creative combination of factors that brought last year’s budget down $700,000 was merely delaying what is now happening .
“What we really did was stall the impact of last year to this year,” she said.
The school committee cited problems behind the current shortfall such as enrollment growth. From 2003 to 2009, L-S student enrollment has risen 18.3 percent, while the teaching staff has only increased 5.1 percent, the presentation noted.
The resulting projections of increases in class size brought a number of comments, including a suggestion by one resident that teachers instruct five classes instead of the four they presently carry.
Teachers often have to counsel students one-on-one or tutor students, said Ritchie in response. With an extra class, that extra help goes away so any cost saving was thought not to be worth the alteration, he said. Additionally, Ritchie added, the four-class structure is inherent in teachers’ contracts.
One resident argued that teacher salaries should be frozen given that many taxpayers are not getting the “step” raises experienced by some teachers.
Another suggested an increase in the number of student teaching assistants, which would help with tutoring and extra help. Ritchie said it is not being done on any large scale, but added it was definitely an idea worth pursuing.
“You got to just sort of grit your teeth and just say it’s not a question of what you want you want or what you fear,” said Ritchie. “We have to prepare a budget that is a non-override budget, by law and we have to make a plan that we’re going to live with. It’s not a plan to scare people into passing an override.”