NEWBURYPORT — School administrators are anticipating a potential $1.2 million budget shortfall for education next year in the wake of the state's economic crisis, costs likely to be borne by residents through fees, a tax hike or other creative revenue solutions to avoid further cuts to the schools.
As Gov. Deval Patrick debates how to stem an estimated $600 million state budget shortfall for the remaining 2010 fiscal year, the School Committee asked interim Superintendent Deirdre Farrell to provide an overview to get the budget conversation going.
The cuts don't paint a rosy picture. Farrell said she's anticipating the $1.2 million shortfall when factoring in historic five-year average increases to the school budget and expected cuts recently laid out by the governor.
While she cautioned this preliminary snapshot of the future landscape is a discussion meant to "set the stage" for 2011, rather than lay down concrete numbers, Farrell listed a number of areas where revenue loss might come up short, including special education, school choice, nursing and charter school reimbursements.
The news of another potential million-plus shortfall wasn't welcome news to School Committee member Nick deKanter, who commented that he was tired of seeing the same million dollar shortfall year after year.
"Each and every year that we go through this exercise, I'm discouraged and dismayed," deKanter said. "We're faced with some very tough choices — $1.2 to $1.5 million — year after year after year."
Given the numbers tend to always be the same, he suggested it was high time the city stand up and view the numbers as a concrete cost, rather than force school administrators to look for more courses to cut.
"As a city, we need to wake up and realize that this is what we need," deKanter said. "We are hemorrhaging, and we cannot afford to keep putting a Band-Aid on this. Year after year, we're chasing after the same 1.5 million bucks just to keep the schools operating the way we want them to."
Regular meeting attendee and district parent Ralph Orlando voiced similar frustration and peppered his comments with some suggestions on how to come up with what he figured would be a 2011 deficit closer to $884,000.
Responding to Farrell's suggested areas for boosting revenue — athletic fees, kindergarten fees and transportation fees — he said that would not be enough to scratch the surface of a million dollar shortage. Instead, he said the city should bear the burden of half the shortage and residents should be made aware throughout the budget process how the school deficit would affect their services.
"One of the problems this city has allowed to occur is to eliminate things," said Orlando, speaking of teachers, programs and school offerings. "Some things are going to need to be cut on the city side as well. Show it to the community and let them decide how they want to proceed."
Orlando said scrapping art at the elementary school would free up $169,000 in the budget, and losing music at the middle and elementary school would add another $172,000 to the budget. A total of 19 teachers making $45,000 a year would have to be cut to make up the shortfall, Orlando said.
"It's not a very pretty picture," he said, following up his grim forecast with a few suggestions on how the city could raise revenue to keep from slicing further into school programs that have already been decimated by cuts.
"You have to come up with ways to lobby this community to increase revenues," said Orlando, who suggested a local meals tax, trash fees, parking fees, hotel fees, GIC (insurance) savings and a debt exclusion as possible ways to raise larger sums of money. "If you add all that up, that's $1.5 million that becomes a revenue stream for this community. If you have to start cutting things, there's not a lot left to cut in this school system."
