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Date: 4/5/2022
SOUTHAMPTON – The William E. Norris School Committee passed the proposed fiscal year 2023 (FY23) budget at just over $5 million following a public hearing during their March 30 meeting. This represents a 3.58 percent increase from last year’s budget.
The Norris School Committee drafts the budget for their school before passing it on to the town’s Finance Committee and eventually, the Select Board and Town Meeting for the final decision.
Superintendent Diana Bonneville started the public hearing with a presentation of the proposed FY23 budget and made note of certain trends they are seeing within the Norris School.
The first point noted by the superintendent was that Norris has the lowest amount of low-income students in the district, but the highest amount of special education students. Bonneville added that the state average for special education students is 18.9 percent, while in the last fiscal year the Norris school saw their average at 27 percent.
Bonneville also added that in terms of high needs students – students under special education, low-income students or English learners – the school is at 40.8 percent of students while the state average is 55.6 percent.
When moving into the goals for the school and district, the superintendent said there was an increased need for social and emotional support for students. Bonneville added through behavior supports and the implementation of the neuro diverse program that the additional support would be more proactive than reactive to student needs.
Bonneville continued by saying the drivers of the FY23 proposed budget were salary increases, impacts of COVID-19, transportation costs and special education costs. She added that the incorporation of the neuro diverse program would help prevent special education cost increases in older grades as it would address certain student needs at a younger age.
Neurodiversity programs aim to bring support systems to neurodiverse students. Neurodiversity refers to a variation in the human brain regarding sociability, learning, attention, mood, and other mental functions in a non-pathological sense.
There were three proposed budgets looked at initially by the committee: one with the nuero diverse program incorporated within the budget, a level services budget, and a budget with requests. After initial discussions, the committee focused on the budget option containing the implementation of the neurodiverse program for the school.
The committee was initially at a more than 5 percent increase from last year’s budget and felt, as a collective, they needed to get the number down close to the 2.5 percent increase threshold recommended by the Finance Committee. To do this the committee had to move funding around and make a final decision on certain positions.
“The problem with the budget has been cutting teachers to support the needs of students,” said Norris Principal Aliza Pluta. She added she hopes to add more students through school choice next year, as the school receives money for every student that comes through school choice, as well as pays when a student leaves through school choice.
The committee also brought up concerns of controlling costs in upcoming years with American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds and Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds that were given to schools due to the pandemic. This was another reason the school committee looked to bring down their initial proposal.
Committee Vice Chair Austin Rogers asked Chair Jon Lumbra what the next steps in this process was if they were to approve a budget that the Finance Committee felt was too high.
“Whatever the committee feels comfortable with and will defend should be sent. If it’s a little over [2.5 percent increase] there has to be a story explaining it. It needs to be crystal clear this budget would use all ESSER funds,” Lumbra said.
The fear was that if the committee did not move to use the rest of their state aids that they would be in a challenging deficit to start the next two years budgeting process, something that was not in anyone on the committee’s interest.
When looking closer at the neurodiverse program based FY23 proposed budget, the School Committee was able to identify a few positions that had salary listings that did not reflect entry level salaries which is what these positions would be receiving.
The committee decided to start with a reduction of $33,000 by making the new librarian position a bachelor’s base salary at 0.8 full-time equivalent as they would be looking for a four day a week position. They also moved the special education teacher new position salary budgeted at a master’s step 5 rate, reset down to the master’s base level.
The committee then decided to allocate 100 percent of all their remaining ESSER funds and put $145,000 of their remaining ARPA funds in as well. This brought the total budget number under the neurodiverse program budget option to the budget number that was ultimately agreed upon.
“We are trying to control down the road costs. If we are trying to bail out the ship, we need a bigger bucket at this point and this gives us that,” said Rogers. “I think this puts us in a position to control downstream costs and in an ideal world bring some of our students back home [through school choice].”