Contract talks continue with Carpenter

“It’s going very well,” said School Committee member Mark Collins who is heading a subcommittee to help negotiate an agreement. “We hope and expect to present a proposal to vote on at the next school committee meeting.”

A former biology teacher in Lexington and teacher-administrator at L-S, Carpenter now serves the high school as a housemaster and sat before the school committee on Jan 27 for a formal interview. The committee unanimously approved the decision last week to hire Carpenter to take over when current Superintendent/Principal Dr. John Ritchie retires after the school year.

“Like the Red Sox, an agreement isn’t an agreement until it’s put in writing,” added Collins.

The committee and Carpenter are engaged in discussions, but with no meeting next week due to school vacation, the full school committee will not have the opportunity to vote on a formal contract until Feb. 24.

Something the school committee was able to settle at their Tuesday meeting was the budget for the next fiscal year. After many bumps in the road, the committee approved a final revised FY09 budget of more than $22.1 million as well as a requested budget of nearly $28 million for FY10.

Ritchie and Director of Finance and Operation Judy Belliveau spoke of how the FY10 budget has been adjusted due to a better-than-projected health insurance rate, negotiated through a collaborative, and the state aid level funding of Chapter 70. With a reduction in regional transportation aid factored in, it was still estimated that about $228,000 could be reallocated throughout the proposed budget.

Ritchie said that with their “best judgment,” putting the funding back could restore 2 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions, add a new third campus aide to allow one campus aide to be assigned to each house and bring back summer curriculum work.

“This would allow the remaining housemasters to be relieved of some of the daily issues related to follow-up on students’ class attendance, etc. and to provide additional coverage in the building,” wrote Belliveau in a memo to the school committee and Ritchie regarding the addition of a third campus aide.

The memo added that another $23,370 would be put into “postage, general instructional supplies and equipment maintenance” while $16,000 would be spent on stipends to staff to relieve the housemasters of some routine duties, “freeing them to focus on the critical student issues and on the increase in teacher evaluations.” Shifting $11,400 from the library aides to the librarian account would enable a 1.0 FTE librarian rather than library aide FTE coverage.

On the negative side, Belliveau noted that $26,000 was cut from L-S’s METCO grant. She said since transportation costs account for such a large portion of the budget — well over half — the district will look at consolidating buses and possible staffing reductions.

Committee member Eric Harris suggested that since this is such an important item with a significant cut, the use of the excess and reserve fund of the budget could be considered to bail out the decrease.

“[The fund] is for unexpected financial reverses, which this is,” said Harris. “I would certainly be willing to consider that if my colleagues were as well.”

There were some questions among members and Ritchie since the cut was to a grant and not operating cost, but it was decided that the committee will bring it up at the next meeting. Belliveau warned that the cut would have to be sustained through next year when there may be a further reduction.

“There may be more cuts in METCO next year,” Belliveau said.