No Hay Dinero!—East Lyme Suspends Elementary Schools' Foreign Language Program

It's impossible to cut $650,000 from the school budget in East Lyme without someone feeling the pinch and, this year, it was the foreign language program offered to 3rd and 4th graders that paid the price. 

"I'm hopeful that in very short order we will be able to restore it," said East Lyme School Superintendent James Lombardo. And if the school district can bring it back, he said, he'd like it to be a more robust program than it has been, because one 50 minute period in a week isn't really sufficient.

"Ideally, we'd want three periods a week," he said. 

Right now, however, even one class a week offered at the three elementary schools isn't affordable. The Board of Education also voted last night to eliminate one fulltime Spanish teaching position at the high school level, because not enough students had enrolled to justify keeping it.   

By eliminating these two fulltime positions, the district was able to cut $65,000 and $85,000 respectively from the budget. But the Board of Education needed to cut even more than the $650,000 ordered by East Lyme's Board of Finance, because the school district found itself with unanticipated additional tuition costs of $40,000 for students who opted to attend magnet schools. 

To reduce the total budget by $690,000, the Board of Education voted 7 to 2 with one abstention in favor of adopting a variety of cuts proposed by Lombardo. In addition to the two teaching positions, they are as follows: 

Health insurance savings: $80,000
Teacher evaluation support: $133,000
Instructional resources: $20,000
Retiree health supplement: $25,000
Unemployment: $45,000
Unpaid leave savings: $17,000
Full day Kindergarten supplies: $10,000
Custodial assignment changes: $14,000
Custodial salary adjustments: $36,000
Pre-purchased items: Atlas software, Naviance, IEP Direct: $27,000
Marching band supplemental: $7,000
Overtime pay (custodians): $25,000
Substitute pay (all positions): $24,000
Prepays (telephone, wireless, vehicle): $23,000
Computer program: $30,000
Salary savings (new hires): $24,000
 
Most of the cuts come from trimming around the edges rather than wholesale eliminations of programs, and some will be relatively painless because there is money in the existing budget to cover some of the line items, such as software and vehicle purchases, that were included in the upcoming budget.

If some of the cuts need to be restored as the school year progresses, Lombardo said he will come back to the board and request a re-appropriation of funds.

"None of these are absolute," Lombardo said. "But we need some starting point."