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01/29/2019 01:00 PMAfter numerous and often heated conversations, the Madison Board of Education (BOE) has a board-approved proposed budget. On Jan. 22, the board voted to approve the administration’s budget and, while the vote wasn’t unanimous, the final count didn’t fall just by party line.
The total proposed budget, presented by Superintendent of Schools Tom Scarice, comes to $58,048,103, a decrease in spending of $55,608 or 0.10 percent. The budget represents a decrease in spending for general education, school facilities, and debt and flat funding for maintenance. Items driving an offsetting increase to the budget include special education and health insurance, two notoriously volatile items.
Coming into this budget, the administration promised the town would recognize a savings from the closure of Island Avenue Elementary School. The BOE voted in 2017 to close Island due to declining enrollment. Rough estimates at the time suggested the closure would yield a savings of anywhere from about $800,000 to $1 million, a savings that would be first recognized this coming fiscal year with the school formally slated for closure in June 2019.
In the budget, the reconfiguration or closure of Island has a $885,698 listed savings. In addition, to keep up with the promise to reduce staff as enrollment continues to decline, $124,620 is listed as a savings from staffing reductions.
The budget also shows a reduction of administrative staff and staff at the high school. However, the budget also invests in new staffing in other areas including an elementary guidance position, a literacy coach, a speech/language pathologist, and starting to share the cost of the second student resource officer (SRO) in the district.
With contractual increases, health insurance, and special education as the biggest spending increases in the proposed budget, the total decrease in the budget ultimately came to $55,609.
The Finance Committee Proposal
After the administration budget was first presented in early January, members of the BOE Finance Committee asked the superintendent to go back and see if he could find more cuts. Specifically, the Finance Committee asked the administration to identify $190,000 in potential non-programmatic cuts with the idea that the additional reduction would demonstrate a greater savings from the closure of Island Avenue.
Throughout early budget discussions, it became apparent that when the board voted to close Island in 2017, people had very different ideas about the impact that $1 million in savings would have on the overall budget. To some, a $1 million savings meant the taxpayer should see more relief this year than just an essentially flat budget. To others, a $1 million savings meant it is $1 million the district isn’t spending on a building year over year.
To try to bridge that gap, Finance Committee Chair Kirk Barneby (R) said the committee aimed for a budget $250,000 below a zero percent increase.
“It seems arbitrary I know, but the idea behind the $250,000 was representing roughly a 25 percent share for the community of the reduction associated with the closure of Island Avenue School,” he said. “And it hopefully could be achieved without materially impacting the ability of the administration to deliver competitive school programming.”
The Finance Committee ultimately decided to shrink its ask. At the meeting, the committee put forward a budget with $128,000 in additional cuts, which would have brought the total budget to $57,920,102, a reduction in spending of 0.32 percent under last year.
The proposal with additional cuts did not sit well with Democratic members of the board. Member Tom Pellegrino, who sits on the Finance Committee, questioned if the committee could cut an administrative budget.
“I question the authority and the jurisdiction of the committee to make that request,” he said. “I felt that the request itself, the dollar amount, was vague and I was concerned about the process.”
Board member and Finance Committee member Happy Marino (R) said the point of the Finance Committee is to review the budget and expenditures. She said she wanted to see more in cuts because of Island Avenue, but compromised on the $128,000 in additional reductions.
“I don’t think anyone stood up here over the last two years and said we are going to close a school and reallocate $1 million to offset future spending,” she said. “We told everyone we would save it…This year we asked the superintendent to propose potential cuts. We did not make those cuts ourselves. Once he proposed them, we went through and did a line-item exercise to look at them.”
State Representative Noreen Kokoruda (R-101) attended the meeting and discussed a few items of concern with the board, one being the debt line in the budget. Unlike some other towns, Madison BOE has a capital debt line included in its annual operating budget, a practice that dates back to at least the bonding for the new high school, which was built in 2003. That number is beginning to drop off as the last of the high school debt rolls through and Kokoruda said she was concerned about the BOE using the debt drop to offset new spending.
“All I am saying is in the past years when we have had a windfall in debt, we looked at that as an opportunity to do more capital projects you really need to do,” she said. “If you start to absorb that capital bonding money in your operating budget, it’s a slippery slope, so be careful.”
Scarice pointed out that the board carried the burden of the debt in its operating budget for years.
“Our budget went up every year when the debt was going up and that was included in how we reported our budget,” he said.
The Vote
The board first voted on the Finance Committee proposal. Marino said that budget is the most responsible budget the board could come to.
“I just caution sending the message that the budget is responsible enough,” she said. “We should send the most responsible budget that we can send and if we are not making programmatic cuts, then I feel more comfortable that we are living up to what we are offering the community rather than just saying it is good enough as it is.”
Board member Seth Klaskin (D), however, said it would be irresponsible for the board to support a budget that went further than what was proposed by the administration.
“I think it creates an expectation among the Board of Selectmen and Board of Finance that there is room to cut and still maintain the excellence of our education program,” he said. “I think it is a dangerous precedent to set to arbitrarily ask the superintendent to make cuts that were not brought forward by the district. I think it is unreasonable to expect more than a negative increase to our budget and to go degrees further than that.”
The Finance Committee budget ultimately failed, 4-5, with Republicans voting in favor and Democrats voting against. The administrations budget was then put back on the table for a final vote. Chair Katie Stein (D) said that this budget reflects some hard decisions while still maintaining the level of education people have come to expect.
“While we might disagree on the bottom line, I am making my decision tonight on the belief that this budget exceeds the expectations for responsibility and meets our educational mandate,” she said. “It reflects a conservative approach without sacrificing educational excellence. This budget reflects the absorption of an additional school safety resource officer, the expansion of our instructional coaching program, and the support of a shared elementary school guidance counselor for our youngest learners. It also responds to the curricular adjustments and impact on resources inherent in the reconfiguration of schools. This budget is the right budget for this time in the town of Madison.”
The board approved the administration’s proposed budget, 6-3.