Live reporting: School Committee - Apr 28, 2015

Present: Douglas, O'Malley, Clement, Mullen, Trahan, Jewell
Absent: Rohrbach


1. Routine Business
Citizen’s Comments - none

Review of Agenda
an addition of an action item


Minutes: I recommend approval of the minutes from the April 7, 2015 School 
Committee Meeting.
motion to approve, seconded, passed 6-0


Payment of Bills Mr. Clement
motion to approve, seconded, passed 6-0

Payroll Mrs. Douglas


FHS Student Representatives no representatives for this evening

Correspondence:
none
2. Guests/Presentations
a. FY 16 Budget Hearing

Superintendent Maureen Sabolinski, Business Administrator Miriam Goodman
thanks to all the school administrators for their input and to Miriam and her staff for putting this together

Foundation budget
number changes based upon enrollment and other factors
DESE determines the required municipal contribution
then add the Chapter 70 funds
required Net School Spending 
total FY 14 = $113M
slide to be added later with breakout on the totals

photo capture of slide during School Committee meeting presentation on school budget

28.5% of the town population is under 18
well above the state average of 21.7% and Norfolk Cnty avg of 23.3%

Chapter 70  $27M plus = 48.4% of the budget
down about 6 percentage points from prior years

slide showing Chapter 70 funds as a percent of school budget
and in relation to net school spending

Federal revenue of about $1.4M for Title I, Title II, IDEA/IDEA preschool and SPED program Improvements

Word from the State House is the kindergarten funds have been kept in the budget despite what the Governor has asked for. It has fluctuated from week to week.

Other sources of revenue from the revolving accounts
Circuit breaker, Lifelong Learning, Food Service, Transportation, etc.

no fee increases across the board: transportation or athletics

2.43% over the current year budget
contractual obligations of $1.0M and $213,000 for health care

5 new teachers being proposed for adding at the following schools

• 1 - FHS
• 2 - ASMS
• 2 - RMS

new teachers being brought in to reduce class size

reduction of 5 teachers across elementary due to declining enrollment
adding 3 math FTE specialists to help with the math program

overall the personnel changes would be a 4.0 FTE

looking at kindergarten enrollment, had 275 at end of registration, had 5 enroll today

$14,547 vs. $11,890 is the per pupil spending on state average DESE calculations

this is again below the state average in 10 of the 11 areas, only professional development (due to the new programs which is driving it) exceeds the state average

seeing increases in ELL requirements which is also driving the hiring process

O'Malley - how can we be so far below the state average? substantially, not just by a little. This is the town that started it all (Horace Mann). I want to be vigilant and increase it however we can.

Trahan - thanks for an excellent presentation. One of the reasons we can be under the state average is because we have phenomenal people teaching and supporting the schools.

reading the budget lines for holds on specific items (per budget hearing process)
no holds on budget

motion to close the budget hearing