No Changes Yet to $35.58 Million School Budget

Board of Education members spent just over a half-hour Wednesday night discussing the $35.58 million 2013-2014 school budget proposed by Superintendent Susan Viccaro last month.

The abbreviated budget discussion did not include any comments from the public — the meeting was lightly attended — and appeared to be driven by the work of the board's finance committee, which had met for two hours prior to the meeting to discuss the district's enrollment and class size levels.

"It was probably one of the healthier discussions we've had over the years," said board chairman Kerrie Flanagan."This is not going to be an easy review process. We've spent quite a bit of time with looking at opportunities to find ways to potentially reduce the budget without impacting student achievement. That's kind of a tall order in these days, but that's what we're doing," she said.

Flanagan's words were echoed by finance committee chairman Robert Fulton.

"We had a really good, in-depth discussion of the tension between enrollment trends and staffing trends," said Fulton, whose committee plans to meet before each of the remaining three board meetings scheduled this month to discuss specific areas of the budget.

Although no specific cuts to Viccaro's proposal — a 4.39 percent net increase over the current year's budget — were proposed, the board appeared prepared to reduce the increase. 

"I think it's fair to say that everybody on the board is concerned about the 4.29 [percent increase]," Flanagan said.

To her point, board members requested additional information about the district's own budget trends, as well as the budget amounts requested by other school district's around the state.

The Board of Education will meet again on Wednesday, March 13 at 7:30 p.m., as well as on March 20 and March 27.

In the meantime, Viccaro said she had been invited to meet Thursday with Office of Policy and Management Secretary Ben Barnes. She told board members she intended to ask Barnes about the state's decision to cut nearly $300,000 in transportation reimbursements to the district.