Schools

School Board Trims Budget Plan

Administrators and school committee members on Tuesday night identified about $250,000 in possible cuts to their original $49.5 million draft budget.

During their second of three planned budget workshops on Mar. 20, Johnston School Committee members recommended about $90,000 in potential reductions to their fiscal 2013 spending plan, with administrators offering another $161,000.

Following the meeting, the budget stands at about $49.3 million, reduced from the original proposal of $49.5 million.

School Commttee Chairwoman Janice Mele (Dist. 3) confirmed that she sees the board's task as bringing the budget in line with Mayor Joseph Polisena's stated intention to maintain the town's contribution of $37.1 million.

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"We still need $250,000" in cuts to bring the school budget down far enough to meet Polisena's number, Mele said.

Member Robert LaFazia (Dist. 1), who is on the committee's negotiating team for the new teachers' contract, said he feels the only way to accomplish that is through lower contract costs.

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"We're going to have to get some help from somewhere," LaFazia explained. "We're going to have to look at our contractual agreements and get some concessions somewhere along the line."

At the start of the session, Supt. Dr. Bernard DiLullo and Business Manager Melissa Devine announced that they had identified savings in unemployment insurance ($10,000), special education tuition ($100,000), vocational tuition ($30,000), and the hiring of a new technical services administrator following an expected retirement ($21,000).

DiLullo also warned the committee that the fiscal 2013 budget won't have the benefit of surplus funds, since the current budget is based on using about $400,000 from previous years.

"We're going to have a $400,000 deficit because we used our surplus this year," DiLullo explained.

As they reviewed the budget, committee members asked about possible cuts to the budget.

Mele questioned the $1,500 line item for health services at , which Devine explained pays for Epi-pens for students.

On the subject of an $8,400 line item for social studies textbooks, DiLullo explained that the current books "are very outdated" and said he considers new books a necessity.

Mele also suggested reducing a proposed $3,000 for art supplies to $2,000, which DiLullo said could be done.

Committee member Joseph Rotella (Dist. 4) pointed to the expected costs of oil and natural gas to heat local schools, and recommended a $70,000 reduction in those accounts for fiscal 2013.

"I'd rather try to take it from here and make it up later, than take it from the kids," Rotella explained.

All-day K the solution to preschool IEPs?

Rotella also questioned Special Education Director Jerry Schimmel on whether he could find savings in his budget through a different approach to screening students who enter the Early Childhood Center needing additional help, but "may not need full-blown special ed services."

In many cases, Rotella explained, "we may give them IEPs (Individualized Education Programs) and spend money on services when we can help them catch up."

DiLullo explained that "all-day kindergarten would really solve a lot of these issues — that's a big part of the problem, that they're only in school a few hours a day."

Rotella noted that he doesn't intend to take funding from programs aimed at students who meet the criteria for requiring special educaton services.

"I think there's funds that need to get to the kids who really need them," Rotella said. "The kids on the cusp, with a little more attention, could be caught up."

Schimmel provided the board with a comparison between Johnston's special education costs and those of nearby communities.

According to the table presented by Schimmel, Johnston spent about $17,000 per special education student; North Providence about $15,000; and Lincoln about $15,600, based on the towns' fiscal 2010 budgets the most recent year available from all of the school districts in Schimmel's survey.

For Johnston in fiscal 2010, spending on special education comprised about 33 percent of its total budget. In Lincoln, the number was 28.6 percent, and in North Providence, 25 percent.

Schimmel also told the committee that the difficulty in trying to make reductions in the special education budget is the town's mandated payments to out-of-district placements.

"Today it was 47; two weeks ago, it was 53," Schimmel explained. "That's always a difficult target for us to handle."

Committee members did not suggest any reductions in the special education budget.

Potential changes to high school bus routes

Another area discussed by the committee at Rotella's suggestion was the costs of running buses to the high school that are not at capacity.

The fiscal 2012 budget for busing stands at about $3.6 million, which includes about $2.2 million to transport students to private and vocational schools outside Johnston. Durham Bus Services is currently in the fifth option year of an original four-year contract.

With the board set to open bids for a new bus contract this week, Rotella said he thinks it's a good time to see whether "we could back into the contract [and] tell the companies 'We've got 'x' number of dollars to pay, give us your plan.'"

Rotella said he'd spoken with officials at Durham and found that the district could change the minimum distance for requiring bus pick-ups of high school students from 1 to 2 miles, for example, and leave the pick-up distance the same for the middle and elementary schools.

That could reduce the number of buses that travel to the high school for afternoon dismissal, many of which are less than full, Rotella explained.

"If we can save the equivalent of two buses, that's $110,000," Rotella noted.

At one point, Rotella suggested changing the high school and middle school opening times to bring them closer together, which may also save some bus costs.

After DiLullo noted that such a change would require negotiating with the teachers' union, LaFazia explained that the committee had looked into such a plan several years ago.

"We had a lot of problems with the middle schoolers' parents not wanting their kids on the same bus with high schoolers," LaFazia said. "It could be a big problem."

In the end, the committee assigned Facilities Manager David Cournoyer to counting the number of students on each bus for the middle and high schools and reporting his findings at the next budget workshop, scheduled for Thursday night at 7 p.m. at .

 

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