Springfield School Board finalizes budget

Summary of the January 21st Springfield School Board meeting.
http://www.vermontjournal.com/content/springfield-school-board-finalizes-budget

Springfield School Board Finalizes Budget Submitted by admin on Tue, 01/28/2014 - 1:55pm SPRINGFIELD, VT -On January 21 at 6 p.m., the Springfield School Board opened their meeting. Finalizing the budget was its purpose. The public was asked if there were any comments on the budget. A Springfield High School student passed a petition requesting that the Russian Language course be put back into the budget. She stated that 49 students had signed it. Jeanice Garfield, Chair of the board thanked her and commented on what a great amount of work went into creating this petition. She then thanked all the young people who had written to her and talked to her about their concerns with the proposed budget. Superintendent Zach McLaughlin showed a short power point reviewing the process that was involved in creating the budget. He said, “We started this conversation at the administrative level back in July-August. The school board joined the discussion in September-October. My goal was to have an honest conversation that was realistic and appropriate. He explained that Montpelier was not the cause of our need to reduce the budget, saying, “We should be a champion for Act 60/68. It was designed to help communities like ours.” His final thoughts were listed on the screen, which he read out loud. These are not cuts we want. These cuts will impact our students. Our plan was to try to limit the impact. We respect that the combined town/school taxes in Springfield are high. The principals of Elm, Union, Riverside and Springfield High schools then briefly explained what impact they felt the proposed budget would have on the school district. All schools were facing a higher teacher/student ratio next year. There would be less time for student support, counseling, intervention, tutoring and One-on-one time. Teachers would be dealing more with behavioral issues that in the past were managed by behavioral para-educators, staff assigned to In-School Suspension and alternative programs that best suited certain students’ learning styles. While students at Union and Elm would no longer have the services of an HCRS clinician, they would share a social worker whose job description requires that he/she work with students and their families. The requirements for high school graduation would need to be lowered, because some of these past (required) courses had been cut. Superintendent Zach McLaughlin interjected at that time the district staff had gone through some stages of grief. Initially, reaction to the cuts was “How could we possibly live with these decisions?” Then, there was anger. Presently, the tone of conversation has changed to, ”OK. We’ll do the best we can.” A gentleman on the Budget Advisory Board suggested that the Russian program be re-instated and the budget be cut elsewhere. Perhaps, we could postpone purchasing lockers for the middle school. McLaughlin countered that the lockers were not included in this proposed budget. The lockers are included in a long list of projects, having to do with the Capital budget. Funds in the Capital budget can not be transferred to the education budget. Decisions on how to spend Capital funds has been postponed until the education budget is finalized. Lastly, the board needed to vote on including three articles to put before Springfield residents. The first article asked the residents to decide if the school board members should be paid a stipend of $550 each for their service to the community. The second article asked the residents if the school district could borrow money for the budget. The third article asked residents to vote Yes or No to approving a total budget of $27,425,582 to support the school year starting July 2014. All board members voted Yes to including all three articles, except for Jeanice Garfield who abstained from voting. The mood was somber as people bundled up and left for home.