School Dept. reviews budget, prepares for challenges
Published on May 3rd, 2000
STONEHAM, MA - The fiscal 2001 Stoneham public school budget is final, and last year's figure was right on.
Business Manager Don Simpson said the School Department will finish in the black for fiscal 2000, according to his May projection.
The schools will spend $18,650,000 next year, if the town approves the budget at the May 1 Town Meeting. This figure is up $894,000 (five percent) from the previous year.
New School Committee member Marc Grimaldi asked whether any plans were in place to reduce special education transportation costs. For the 1999-2000 school year $266,815 was budgeted; $291,680 is proposed for 2000-2001.
Superintendent Joe Connelly said Special Education Director Robert McArdle is developing new curricula to serve some of the special education children now sent outside of Stoneham.
"We want to keep these children in Stoneham," Connelly said. "But if we don't have the right program for them, they belong outside (the district)."
Connelly said new programs could keep more students in Stoneham and cut the rising special education transportation costs.
<b>Staffing</b>
The first step in the budget process is to project how many kids will be sitting happily, or otherwise, in class the next year.
The School Department's October projection was accurate, requiring no new hires.
Robin Hood School kindergarten classes will number 24 and 25 students respectively, but parents will have the option to request their child move to another school. Also, the registration for Robin Hood kindergarten is closed. New neighbors will be registered in the smallest class in town, currently Colonial Park at 16 students.
<b>Middle School renovation</b>
School Committee Chairwoman Jeanne Craigie said the School Committee, not the selectmen, should appoint the members of a feasibility committee charged with evaluating what should be done to improve the Middle School building.
Members Mary Pecoraro, Marie Christie, and Mary Carey agreed. Grimaldi did not disagree.
Article 23 of the Town Meeting asks the town to appropriate $20,000 for a feasibility study. The money would pay for the engineers and experts working with the committee.
Christie said that in her many years of experience feasibility committees have been chosen by the School Committee and subsequent building committees by the selectmen.
"This is our article," Christie said.
Craigie proposed a seven-member committee: two Middle School parents, two taxpayers without children in the schools, a selectmen, a School Committee member and a Finance Board member.
<b>North School</b>
Lawyers for the town revised the one-year lease offered to the SEEM Collaborative for the North School.
Clauses specifying the lessee's responsibilities for maintenance and asbestos management as well as detailed parking requirements and additional liability insurance were added.
Connelly anticipates that the agreement will be finalized within the next couple weeks.
<b>More money</b>
Pecoraro urged citizens to call their legislators to show support for the "Chapter 70 equalization fund" proposed by Senator Richard Tisei (R-3rd Middlesex).
School Committee members agreed, the money would help communities like Stoneham recoup dollars lost from an Education Reform funding formula which has slighted the town.
Assistant Superintendent Elizabeth Keroack said another bill before the State Senate could give Stoneham $68,000 for technology.
<b>VNA must go</b>
The Visiting Nurse Association of Middlesex-East operating out of the East School on 11 Beacon St. must be out of the facility by Oct. 31, 2000.
If not, the School Department will evict them.
The VNA has not yet found a new location.
<b>Central School update</b>
At Town Meeting School Building Committee Chairman Dan Hogan said the committee hopes to go out to bid with the project by July and have work completed by the fall or winter of 2001.
But everything hinges on the results of soil tests from the adjacent railroad bed and the remediation required by the Department of Environmental Protection.
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