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Date: 10/3/2023
LUDLOW — Even though the new school year just go underway, the Ludlow Public Schools has begun talking about their fiscal year 2025 budget.
One of Superintendent Frank Tiano’s goals when he took over a year ago was to be more transparent and involve the School Committee and Board of Selectmen during the entire budget process by meeting quarterly.
“We started looking at our budget in August and worked our way through each point of the process like working with our budget mangers, the town administrator and town accountant while also setting up times with our School Committee to update them,” Tiano said.
On Sept. 19, the School and Finance committees met with the Board of Selectmen to conduct a joint meeting to have a preliminary discussion about this year’s budget.
While there were no projected asks by the School Committee to vote on, Town Administrator Marc Strange said that both the town and school budget is assumed to increase by 3%.
Tiano added the only preliminary numbers they have discussed is an approximate $1.7 million increase for staff due to raises.
Tiano had expressed at past meetings last year for the FY24 budget with the School Committee that the schools would need a 9%, or $3.15 million dollar increase to achieve a level service budget for FY24.
After multiple meetings, the schools received approximately a $35.95 million budget, which was a 4.3% increase from FY23.
This caused Ludlow to have to cut 20.4 positions, but Tiano added that some of those positions were left vacant by teachers who retired or relocated.
He added, “We reduced 20 positions, that doesn’t always equate to 20 people. For example, in our libraries instead of four librarians, we have two this year. Class size we were able to maintain our class size, but it is right on the edge. Reductions next year would cause our class sizes to go up.”
Besides staffing shortages and the low amount state funding, the biggest battle the School Committee is trying to work past besides the budget there are given, the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds they received have run out after three years, leading to a $1.6 million reduction to the operating budget.
The School Committee agreed to use ESSER one-time funds for mandated positions.
Selectman Tony Goncalves said, “Just conceptually, when you got the ESSER money you hired 20 or so positions including janitors, with a declining enrollment. So, it’s not fair, I don’t think that we were trying to fund those 20 positions that you hired with money you really didn’t have or wasn’t the taxpayers.”
For example, in FY23. There were 14 full-time employees reduced — 17 impacted — due to not meeting level service budget but nine full-time employees were added back due to English language learning and special education requirements.
Goncalves added, “I think people are still looking at that and saying we really can’t take those positions and keep carrying them forward with a declining population in the district. I think we are going to be looking at that.”
Tiano was not hired yet as Ludlow’s superintendent when the ESSER funds were being spent. Interim Superintendent Lisa Nemeth was in charge.
In 2022, the district had $3.19 million in ESSER funds and used some of it for addressing learning loss, addressing the needs of students impacted by COVID-19, training and more.
Even though using ESSER funds to supplement the budget were predicted to cause problems once those funds ran out, past School Committee Chair Chip Harrington suggested that the administration team could go back and find a way to use those funds to prevent some of the cuts at the time.
The reduction of ESSER funds is something that Tiano said he is confident in his team on working past that problem again in year two, and they will continue to focus on how the taxpayers money can be spent most efficiently.
At the Sept. 26 School Committee meeting, Tiano presented a budget timeline for FY25.
The timeline is available on Ludlow Public Schools website, but some important dates include budget priorities being established by the School Committee by the end of October and another joint meeting with the Board of Selectmen and Finance Committee on Dec. 19.
A draft of the budget will be distributed to the School Committee and posted on the Website on Jan. 9, 2024, and there will be a public hearing and approval of the superintendent’s FY25 budget on Feb.13.
All these dates are tentative, but Tiano said he would like to stay as close as possible to the dates listed.