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Date: 7/12/2023
LUDLOW — The School Committee and Superintendent Frank Tiano discussed budget cuts at a recent meeting.
After a discussion that lasted over a few months, the town was able to allocate approximately $35.95 million in its fiscal year 2024 budget for Ludlow Public Schools that was approved at Town Meeting on May 8.
Although the budget represented a 4.3% increase from FY23, Tiano said that increase was not enough.
“Although it was a 4.3% increase, our highest in years, it was still $1,557,882 short of what we need to provide a level service budget for our families and our students next year,” Tiano said.
Seventy-five percent of the budget is salaries, causing the schools to make some staffing cuts.
Tiano said, “We needed to reduce our workforce what turned out to be 20.7 positions. This was our estimate going in as our budget was passed. Before Town Meeting, I met with [Ludlow Education Association] leadership to go through those cuts. We have been looking at reductions for months as we were going through the budget.”
According to Tiano, in terms of actual staff, 10 of the positions that were reduced were occupied by people who had resigned or were retiring.
The School Committee also provided a list of budget goals for FY24 including, maintaining a low class sizes, continue their relationship with the Lower Pioneer Valley Educational Collaborative, schedule arts, music and choir, improved focus on mental health for athletes and cut transportation costs.
Tiano said, “We had those in our focus as well. It was a long process, arduous process. Specifically, as you are dealing with seven bargaining units and multiple individual contracts. Going through staffs primary, secondary certification, going through the contract language in terms of bumping which is the term that if a staff member has been reduced and they are more senior than another staff member that they can bump them out of that position.”
He added, “It really is a complicated process and one we took great pains to do it by the book. To replace 20.7 positions in addition to the positions that have been reduced the year before, you are shrinking your service providers. Our enrollment overall is going down but our needs in the enrollment of our students have increased.”
Tiano added that Ludlow Public Schools will face more financial difficulties when it comes to developing the FY25 budget.
The biggest issue in creating the FY24 budget was the fact that the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds have run out after three years, leading to a $1.6 million reduction to the operating budget.
“Due to the 0% and then 1% increase the year before, the School Committee were trying to cover reductions with ESSER money and now we are looking at basically two years worth of reductions,” Tiano said.
There are still some ESSER III funds included in the FY24 budget that expire after this year and Tiano said he will need to investigate ways to work with losing those funds.
School Committee member Sarah Bowler mentioned how she thought the special education department was affected the most in the FY24 budget.
“I see special education got hammered. Losing multiple positions in special education including inclusion programs and I am sure parents are questioning what is going to happen next year. When you have inclusion programs that I believe you lost four teachers to and how that is going to work out.”
Tiano said that every decision that was made was made in conjunction with the special education department and principals to look at scheduling going forward.
He added, “We still have inclusion programs for next year and providing services for every student on their [individualized education plan] otherwise we would not have those decisions. The format of the inclusion model, rather than having an inclusion teacher in with a regular education teacher all day long. Looking at how we provide services for next year, we be able to provide for the IEPs and have students spread out across more of the classrooms and the special education will no longer be in class one full day. They would be in specifically around the goals of providing that specified instruction that’s on their IEPs. We will completely meet the IEPs.”
Some have questioned why there are currently two assistant principals at Ludlow High School even though the school is the same size as Harris Brook Elementary School who has one assistant principal.
Tiano said, “Our assistant principals at the high school along with our assistant principal at [Baird Middle School] provide a supervisor for our students, they provide supervision for our staff in terms of working with them evaluation wise. To keep our students safe on a basic level they are needed and in terms of what they bring professionally and more support, they are definitely needed.”
The Ludlow school department also used to have a librarian at each school but that number has been reduced to two librarians who will have the rotate throughout the schools.
Tiano began serving as the Ludlow Public Schools superintendent in July 2022 and his main goal was to change the budget process to be more transparent with the town including the residents, Board of Selectmen and School and Finance committees.
He said “As a result, we faced some difficult decisions, we completely overhauled our budgeting process this past year. We took great pains to ensure that line items were untangled that were some what tangled, we had our budget managers identify specially what they were going to be spending their dollars on allocated under each line.”
To view the FY24 budget documents, visit www.ludlowps.org/school-committee.