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Schools

School Budget Approved; Elementary Level Language Classes Saved

Projected $279,000 surplus from this year will help keep world language classes.

The Board of Education has passed its reduced budget for 2011-12, though a projected surplus for the current year will spare a quarter-million dollar cut to the elementary world language program.

The final budget will come in at $93.4 million, an increase of $1 million over current spending, or 1.08 percent. The board on Thursday approved reductions of $631,000 from the budget it had requested. But Michael Feeney, chief financial office for the schools, said a $279,000 surplus will soften the blow.

“What we will do is pre-buy things like books and computers that we had budgeted for next year with the surplus,” Feeney said. The money for those items in the 2011-12 budget can be reallocated.

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The money will be used to offset cuts of more than $254,000, which would have eliminated world language in elementary schools. The plan now is to put the entire $279,000 in that line item and save world language for grades one through five. It also might save the program at the kindergarten level.

Other approved cuts include increasing class sizes at Johnson School to 25, saving $50,000; and eliminating a first grade class at Nichols and a sixth grade class at Eli Whitney next fall. Feeney said new numbers say the classes are not needed, and that each would trim $56,867 from the budget.

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The contingency budget, originally slated for $200,000, now stands at $78,000. Feeney said that could fall lower if the board is required to dip into surplus for an arbitration award with the secretaries’ union.

The utilities account is being reduced by more than $56,000, based on projected savings from new energy-efficient boilers and other equipment.

Superintendent of Schools Irene Cornish said much of the surplus is due to a spending freeze that was implemented in January when the special education budget became a cause for concern. Feeney said he will not have final numbers on the surplus until the books close in June, but said he is confident they will have the $279,000 -- and possibly more.

When questioned by Finance Committee Member Victor Liss, Feeney admitted that he was “not necessarily” comfortable with such a low contingency budget.

Neither is Board of Education Chairman Gavin Forrester III.

“But in a $93 million budget, you are going to have line items that you feel are too low,” Forrester said. “And this district has had contingency accounts as low as $25,000 in the past.”

The board also cut $79,000 for state-mandated upgrades to grease traps at the schools, and will ask the Town Council to switch those upgrades to the capital improvement budget.

The board is not responsible for its own snow removal, though Forrester said anticipated cuts to the town’s Public Works Department could prove problematic.

“Especially if we get a winter like this last one,” he said. “If the town is having delays and we have trouble getting our grounds cleared and getting our people in, we might have to use more snow days.”

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