School Board Reduces And Approves Budget

The Board of Education approved and voted to advance a $29,544,964 school budget Wednesday night, which is $63,000 less than this year's budget.

The budget calls for two special education teachers, one health teacher and one world language teacher to be laid off, while reducing other teaching positions to to half-time and eliminating two elementary teaching positions when the teachers retire this year.

"I regret some of the cuts here but we maintained the core of where we are," said Superintendent of Schools Dr. Michael Graner.

Four people will be laid off but eight salaries will be eliminated from the 2012-13 budget. There was also a $85,000 reduction to the instructional accounts, a $64,831 reduction to the operational accounts and the $63,000 reduction to the special education.

The $63,000 reduction came out of the special education account because, according to board chairman Sharon Hightower, there will be 21 fewer students enrolled in special education next year and the district spends $3,000 on each of those students.

Board members hope this is the last reduction they make to the 2012-13 school budget, which was cut by $1,041,000 earlier this year in order to present a zero-percent increase budget to the town.

"I want to remind people that over the last several years we've been reducing the budget, in fact we've been reducing and nipping at these programs," said Hightower before the budget was approved. "I don't want folks to get comfortable around the fact that zero works. It really doesn't work…you get to the point of diminishing returns when you don't start to put the appropriate level of resource."

According to Graner, the district is in good shape for the next two to three years and he said that going forward, "we need to negotiate contracts that are more in line with current economics."

The largest increase to next year's budget is in the teacher salaries, which increased by $671,552. Teachers in the first 14 steps of the compensation guide advanced a step and received an average pay raise of 6.5 percent. Teachers at the top of the guide received a general 2.7 percent raise, according to board member Robert Beaver.

But, he said, teachers did agree to concessions in 2010-11 and did not take a pay raise or step increase.

"What I'm hoping will come...is that our community starts to think about the strategic development of resources so that we don't always sit in this position of having to be so close to the edge," said Hightower. "It shouldn't have to be this tight every year."

Initially, Graner proposed a short list of reductions that roused residents to attend budget hearings and advocate for items set to be cut, like elementary music instruction, elementary tutors, and a marine sciences program called Project Oceanology.

The school board eventually agreed to restore funding for the tutors, the yearbook advisor, the music and marine science programs with money that would have been used for unexpected costs.

"I am just very very proud of the process that this board went through," Graner said before the board voted on the budget. "I think the board used good judgment…we've swallowed our medicine, we've done what we had to do."