Other than full-day kindergarten, what’s in the Concord school district’s proposed $81.8 million operating budget for next year?
The district will cut teachers in certain grades and add some in others. With a Rundlett renovation in the not-so-distant future, it will tuck some money away. And special education costs continue to grow.
(A quick note: the district’s total proposed budget, including food service and grants, is $87.1 million. But only the operating budget of $81.8 million affects the tax rate.)
Schools increasingly work to meet the complex mental health, behavioral, and socio-economic needs of students. The district is proposing to spend $20.6 million on special education and student services next year, just under $142,000 more than this year.
Concord schools have been able to bring four students back into the district from out-of-district placements, which will save $249,000 next year in tuition. Those savings, however, will be nearly canceled out by $229,000 in additional district staff to help special education students. The district will also spend $1 million with William White Educational and Behavioral Consulting Services, an Ashland firm specializing in autism. The district is establishing a task force to try and built up in-house capacity.
Special education aside, the district will also spend $159,000 to pick up a larger share of the cost on certain positions that were primarily funded by grants, including substance abuse counselors at the middle and high schools, community mental health clinicians, and an early childhood coordinator.
Although the district is proposing to add several kindergarten teachers to accommodate a full-day program next year, it’s also cutting teaching staff in other grades to right-size as enrollments continue to decline across the district. There will be two fewer teachers at Broken Ground School, one fewer at Christa McAuliffe, two fewer at Rundlett Middle School, and two fewer at Concord High.
District administrators project they’ll be able to do so while still staying within Concord’s class-size guidelines, but they concede classes will likely get bigger, and get close to the district’s caps. In grade 5 at Christa McAuliffe, a class could be as large as 26 students.
That’s caused some consternation among certain parents, a handful of which turned out to the district’s first budget public hearing Wednesday despite heavy snow to advocate for smaller classes.
One parent, Aimee Valeras, came to the meeting with her third-grade daughter Ayanna Valeras. She told the board the research was clear: especially for at-risk students, small classes are critical to success.
Ayanna, whose class, her mother said, has 25 students already, also stood up to the mic.
“My teacher is awesome, there is just not enough of her to go around,” she said.
The district’s $12 million capital budget isn’t budging much next year, and is slated to go down a little under $76,000. Concord business administrator Jack Dunn said Concord schools will mostly just do status-quo maintenance over the coming year, although the media center at Broken Ground will see a big facelift with new carpeting, furniture, ceiling tiles, and lighting getting installed this summer.
The district is proposing to put away $805,322 into its Facilities and Renovations Trust Fund. The fund, also known as the “stabilization fund”, is what the district taps for major capital projects. There’s $3.3 million in it right now, and officials hope to grow the pot to around $8 million by the time the district is ready to break ground on a new middle school project.
One interesting tidbit is something that won’t be in the budget next year. The Concord Regional Diploma Academy allows high school students and adults alternative pathways to a high school diploma, but it has also traditionally run a non-credit community education program with enrichment activities for adults.
With the former Dame School being reborn as a community center run by the city’s parks and recreation department, the district and the city have agreed to transfer responsibility for the community education program over to the municipal side.
Dunn said the city and the district were already in some instances running redundant programming.
“We just saw overlaps. Things like archery. They were running archery, we were running archery,” Dunn said. The program was running at a roughly $65,000 loss for the district, he added.
The board approved a three-year deal for maintenance transportation workers in February, which includes a 5.5 percent raise over three years. But there are still four outstanding contracts being negotiated by the district – for teachers, educational assistants, food service workers, and administrative assistants. Dunn said the district built certain assumptions about what the deals would require in terms of additional funds in next year’s budget proposal, and that the board has approved contracts after the budget was passed in prior years without problems.
The board only needs five votes to pass their budget on the first go-around, and are aiming to do so by March 19. If they need to reopen the budget in October to fit in a contract that didn’t fit into the district’s assumptions, they’ll need seven votes.
If the nor’easter kept you at home on Wednesday, you’ve still got the chance to weigh in at a public hearing on the budget this Monday. It’s scheduled for 7 p.m. at Rundlett Middle School. The board is slated to have another work-session March 14.
Budget documents are available online at sau8.org/school_board/budgets/2018-2019_proposed_budget.
(Lola Duffort can be reached at 369-3321 or lduffort@cmonitor.com.)
Editor’s note: Seven votes are needed to re-open the Concord school district’s budget after adoption. An earlier version of this article included the incorrect number.