The Kingston School Committee met on Monday, April 10. Superintendent Jill Proulx provided a budget update. She said that she, Christine Healy, Committee Chair Jeanne Coleman, and Committee member Mike Shekane met with the Finance Committee to discuss their request to reduce the budget by $300,000. Proulx said that they may be able to use ESSER funds to pay for the $60,000 required for furniture for additional classes at KES. She said they would also consider taking some of the technology items and moving them to ESSER. Proulx pointed out that if they take recurring costs out of the budget and move them to ESSER, there is likely to be a greater increase in the budget next year when they appear again. Since there were two placeholders for two out-of-district placements and only one was needed, there would be a $30,000 decrease there. Additionally, $10,000 from the Building Utilization Fund could be used to help offset the budget. These savings totaled $150,000.
Proulx pointed out that 80 percent of the budget is salary which is why they need to look at staffing for potential cuts. She said that the removal of a special education teacher would save $65,000. “There would be less scheduling flexibility for students who require co-teaching,” she said of the reduction. Proulx further said that $30,000 could be saved with the removal of a 0.4 music teacher. The third cut would be the full-time paraprofessional. Proulx said that this would mean that there would no longer be a full-time paraprofessional assigned to each classroom. These cuts would total $116,000. Proulx said that since this still lands them about $40,000 shy of the goal, they would then need to turn to cutting classroom teachers which would result in larger class sizes which was already noted as a problem.
There was discussion surrounding the fact that there were budgeted positions within the sub-separate programs that were unfilled and as a result money was being spent on contracted services. It was said that the positions were posted but unable to be filled. “What I’m hearing is if we were able to proceed with the adequate staffing in that program, you’re confident that we would have been able to keep some of those placements in,” Committee member Timothy Lewis said. He said that he was therefore hesitant to fill the behaviorist position and would prefer instead to fill the current vacancies. Grable said she agreed but noted the difficulty in filling the positions. “I would add that Mike [Bambery] brought to the table the amount of time that his adjustment counselor and his current behaviorist were dedicating themselves to the Silver Lake substantially separate program,” Proulx said. Bambery, Grable, and Proulx still advocated for the addition of the behaviorist position.
Lewis asked what could be done in the future to avoid large increases in the budget like what was being seen this year. “It was an unusual year in that we had a population increase in not only kindergarten but in Grade 1. The Committee has approved the addition of several positions which is adding to the increase in the budget. We’ve talked about the issues that are putting pressure on the special education budget; some of which were caused by the pressures of Covid, for example, transportation was increased because smaller transportation companies could not survive… we lost those competitive rates… I think there are some other drivers,” Proulx said. Healy said there was a 14 percent transportation increase. She said she hoped this year was not a precedent setting year.
Lewis made a motion that they reconsider their previously voted budget with the cuts as outlined by Proulx. Coleman said that she would not support a motion for a $300,000 cut since that would require an additional $44,000 being cut that had not been discussed. She said that she would entertain a motion to cut a total of $266,000 as discussed. Coleman said, “the data as well as the information is out there for any taxpayer who is questioning our budget.” She further said that as School Committee members she did believe it was their job to be at Town Meeting to answer any questions that members of the public may have. The updated budget represented a 10.4 percent increase, down from a 14 percent increase. The Committee voted to approve an elementary school operating budget of $10,239,747, a special education budget of $5,989,065, and an out-of-district vocational budget of $198,000.
Kingston Elementary School Principal Kerri Whipple provided an update. She said that they have been focusing on citizenship. Whipple said that they had their second visit, this time virtual, with author Beth Berry. The students are working with her on creating their own stories. Whipple noted that school pictures took place and due to an error, every student would be receiving a free class picture regardless of whether they ordered one. Whipple said that family surveys went out and that two concerns of note were class size and recess.
Kingston Intermediate School Principal Mike Bambery also provided an update. He said that the art mural event would be April 28. “We’re deep in MCAS… that’s our focus right now… the last day will be the twenty-sixth… things have been going very, very well,” Bambery said.
Fourth grade teacher Brette Blette provided an update for Teacher’s Corner. She said that MCAS testing was underway. “I know that myself included are very appreciative of the PTO donations to our classroom libraries from the book fair… a lot of the students were very excited to get new books,” Blette said. She noted that the grades that have not yet had their field trips were preparing for them. “Hopefully all of the sickness that many of the kids have had over the last few weeks will go out the window with those windows open as we head into the spring,” she told the Committee.
Director of Business Services Christine Healy also provided an update. She told the Committee that there was $300,000 in Circuit Breaker funds that will not be used this year that can be carried over for a reduction in the FY24 budget. They discussed the number of students in out-of-district special education at the K-6 level in Kingston and noted that they were up from a year ago. A Committee member asked if the addition of a behaviorist at Kingston Intermediate School could help keep some of those students in district and effectively save the district from the out-of-district costs. “When we get to the point where we get to an out-of-district placement, the kids, they aren’t accessing the curriculum and that’s the number one threshold for me,” Bambery said. He continued, “If we’ve tried everything possible and then the teacher says the kid is not accessing the curriculum regardless of what we do and what strategy we put in place, that’s when we look to move to an out-of-district placement.” Bambery said that to Administrator of Special Education Marie Grable’s credit, when she had the outside evaluators come in, they were not able to identify any strategies that had not been tried and concurred with the decision to move students.