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| By Courtney Llewellyn Reminder Assistant Editor LONGMEADOW With its major budget issues and $2.15 million override behind it, the Longmeadow Public Schools are ready to look forward. While money from that override is being used to retroactively pay teachers' salary increases, Tom Mazza, the school district's business director, created a detailed budget for the upcoming FY08 and FY09 school years for review by the School Committee during its Tuesday night meeting. The 85-page budget detailed every expense every school in the district will have to deal with through the end of FY09, from teacher and administrator salaries to utilities to specific textbooks. This is considered a level-service budget because the override only provided enough money to continue the current level of education at the schools without increases in any one department. Mazza changed the format of the budget to reflect the control lines that were approved by the School Committee in December and so it will match the Munis year-to-date budget reporting format. School Committee member Rob Aseltine gave a brief overview of the budget to the rest of the committee before discussion began. "Our mandate is to live within the framework set up by the override," Aseltine said. "This budget breaks down the costs for each school energy costs have been a thorn in our side and the revenues." He added the budget packet included information about enrollment and staffing. One major change for the FY09 budget is the consolidation of all special education costs into the Pupil Services section. In FY09 the costs for special eduction will rise to $9.3 million, which is approximately 30 percent of the school's entire budget. The total for maintenance, which includes custodial staff and utilities, will increase 12 percent over the FY08 budget to $1,427,735. Aseltine said that since all the schools are designed for dual fuel heating (using oil and gas), one way to lessen heating costs will be to use gas only, as it is currently cheaper than oil. Another large change in the budget concerns technology in Longmeadow's six schools. The consolidation of administration hardware and software, as well as district wide hardware, into the technology section totals $102,460. The costs of ConnectEd and Aesop, systems to inform parents of school closings, delays, etc. and to call for substitute teachers when needed, respectively, were added into the technology budget. "You can't overestimate the desperate need for technology updates," Superintendent E. Jahn Hart said. "It's a dire situation." It may be difficult to maintain everything at level-service, however. "We're seeing a $200,000 decline in revenue because no reserves were in place to be carried forward," Aseltine stated. "That's problematic because we've been covering recurring costs with non-recurring revenue." Class sizes were also an issue discussed by the School Committee. Current and projected enrollment shows large class sizes for first grade at Wolf Swamp with smaller classes for third grade. Hart recommended that one third grade teacher position be eliminated and one first grade teacher position be added. "Our least reliable projections are for kindergarten and first grade," Hart told the committee. Aseltine added, "We may have to add more sections of first grade in the future. We have to be prepared for that." Other recommendations from the superintendent included reorganizing teacher resources in the other elementary schools as well. *** Another item on the horizon for Longmeadow schools is the possible reinstatement of a health curriculum in the high school. The Parent Advisory Council (PAC) met with the School Committee to talk about plans to start up a health course again, as it was cut several years ago due to budgetary constraints. Once present in all three levels of school, only the middle schools now have a health class available for students. Debbie Taylor, PAC president, brought forward a statement to the School Committee, saying the need for a health curriculum has been raised repeatedly. The group asked questions of local medical professionals and almost all their feedback said they were in favor of adding a health course to the high school as well. Dr. Jay Burton, Dr. Cathy Mahoney and school nurse Charlotte Steele were all mentioned as supporters of a health program. No students have been questioned yet about the need for a health program, however. Karen Engel, director of health services at Mount Holyoke College and a parent of a Longmeadow teen, said it was "embarrassing" not to have a health program at LHS. Other local schools that do not have high school health programs are St. Mary's, Holyoke and South Hadley. School Committee vice-chair Christine Swanson asked the PAC how they would like this project to progress. Larry Berte, the high school principal, said he would like to see health as its own course, not a part of physical education and ideally he would like to see it start in freshman year. The class would be staffed by a health professional and he suggested health professionals from the town could visit the class from time to time. "I'm a big supporter of this and I can't wait to see it back in the curriculum," Aseltine said, "but I want more research on it. We can't afford to do something that's not working." He added that what the PAC has planned -- a course that would involve traditional health topics as well as nutrition, depression, sexual health, etc. -- has the potential to be a very successful program. "This will be on our radar screen," School Committee chair Geoff Weigand said. "We need to think about where we have to get to to have a viable program. We've got a lot of work to do. It's great, but it's the beginning." The approximate cost for a new health program, including a teacher, textbooks and materials, would be around $50,000, according to Berte. The PAC will discuss the topic again at their meeting on Feb. 13. |