Schools discuss ways to slice 300K cash pie
Published on August 18th, 2004
STONEHAM, MA - The School Committee altered its spending plan for potential funding from this Thursday’s Special Town Meeting after a proposal to spend $60,000 of the monies on traffic directors met stiff resistance Monday night.
Although School Committee members agreed the week prior that the loss of over twenty traffic directors created a safety vacuum that needed to be addressed, School Committee member Marie Christie adamantly opposed using school department funds for a municipal expense.
“I will not support funding traffic directors in any way, shape, or form, not when we had to cut $2 million from our budget,” argued Christie. “I think it’s a police department function and that it belongs with the police department.”
While Superintendent Dr. Joseph Connelly agreed that the potential $300,000 in funding would be best utilized going directly to teaching positions, he considered the safety hazard evident in having only three traffic directors too great to ignore.
“At this point, it doesn’t seem that [Chief O’Keefe] is going to get that support. And this is a way to get back some of these ten positions,” said Connelly.
“This would also be a way for us to share this $300,000 in unanticipated funding between the town and the school side,” the superintendent added.
Saying she would support Article Two this Thursday night - which seeks to restore $100,000 worth of traffic director positions to the FY05 budget - Christie again countered that the traffic directors should be funded through the town. The school committee member added that if that citizen warrant article were to fail, the burden of safely transporting children to and from school fell upon the town’s parents.
“It’s my position that our job is to educate the children. It’s the duty of the police department or the parents to get them there. Once they do get there, we will educate them,” Christie said.
Although he reluctantly went along with Connelly’s plan to utilize some of the $300,000 in funding for traffic directors the week prior, School Committee member David Sheils agreed with Christie in light of several new developments.
Among those changes, Connelly explained that after meeting at great length with Town Counsel Bill Solomon, he was informed that the school department could not pay for the traffic directors out of their budget and still have the duty remain a police department function. According to Connelly, because of Solomon’s decision, the school department was left with two options: 1) create new crossing guard positions within the school department budget or 2) attempt to transfer the $60,000 to the police department budget at October Town Meeting.
Preferring the second option, the Superintendent argued that creating new crossing guard positions would result in the loss of the chapter 90 traffic powers the positions carried under the police department’s jurisdiction.
“We could establish new crossing guard positions. My only concern with that is I think their effectiveness is enhanced by their association with the police department,” the Superintendent explained.
According to Sheils, with the municipal sector planning on requesting several hundred-thousand dollars worth of funding in October, he questioned whether citizens would approve the necessary transfer.
“I had reservations about it because of the funding issue and because of the difficulties of going to fall Town Meeting and moving it over. I’m not sure that’s going to happen. So I’m very fearful of asking for anything at Town Meeting and I would support not funding the traffic directors,” Sheils commented.
The School Committee now plans on presenting citizens with a list of programs and positions that could be potentially funded should the $300,000 warrant article be approved. Among some of the items discussed by board members, restoring the freshman sports programs, extra-curricular activities at the high school, and elementary teaching aides were all briefly considered.
Despite the unknown use for that $60,000 worth of funds, Connelly did outline his proposal for the remaining $240,000. The Superintendent’s first priority would be to restore four elementary teaching positions, resulting in the elimination of high enrollments within the South and Robin Hood Schools’ first, second, fourth and fifth grade classes.
Secondly, Connelly would restore either two art or two music teachers at the elementary level, resulting in all elementary school students receiving 45-minutes of instruction in both physical education and fine arts every week.
“The reason I’m saying either art or music is because my understanding at the last meeting was that we didn’t have enough available art teachers. However, I have since learned that one of my art teachers is available while one of my music teachers is not available. So it’s going to be a toss-up either way,” said Connelly.
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