Town Manager Says His Budget is Favorable for Watertown's Schools

[Updated May 22, 10:35 a.m.]

Despite a push from school officials for more money, Watertown Town Manager Michael Driscoll said his budget is generous to the Watertown Public Schools.

The education appropriation will go up $1.34 million from the current school year, Driscoll said, a 3.92 percent increase. That represents a bigger jump than other departments.

"Town departments are going up 2.41 percent," Driscoll said.

At the beginning of May, School Committee Chairwoman Eileen Hsu-Balzer said that she hoped that the schools would get more funds, especially considering that the state funding for special education will likely be higher that first expected.

She noted that the school budget was reduced by the amount that they would have gained from the additional special education Circuit Breaker funds - which help districts pay for the highest cost students.

Driscoll said the schools have had a larger increase than most departments for the past five years. Revenues coming into town have risen 11.88 percent from Fiscal 2010 to 2014, and average of 2.38 percent a year, he said. Over those years, the education budget has risen more than 15 percent, for an average of 3.03 percent a year.

At the same time, municipal departments have only risen about 0.84 percent a year.

Once again, Driscoll asked school officials to change the way teachers contracts are structured and remove automatic raises for years of service.

"The School Committee and School Administration needs to work with the honorable Town Council and Town Administration to develop budgets that are indeed sustainable in order to avoid impacting the level of service to the children of Watertown in the 2013-14 school year and every school year there after," Driscoll said.