The School Committee has approved a $250,000 supplementary budget for this year that restores eight jobs that had been eliminated in the budget approved earlier for the School Department.
AGAWAM – Now that the School Department has approved a $250,000 supplementary budget to the city’s fiscal 2012 spending plan the issue is expected to be put to a vote by the City Council during its Aug. 1 meeting.
The School Committee last week approved a supplementary budget that restored eight full-time jobs and the 50 percent of the pay of the school resource officer that the School Department funds.
The supplementary spending plan seeks to pay the costs of one elementary school teacher each in Granger School, Robinson Park School and Phelps School as well as five teachers aides overall. That comes to one teachers aide each at Robinson Park School, Phelps School and the Early Childhood Center and two for sitting in on individual education plan meetings.
In the $73.3 million fiscal 2012 budget approved by the City Council two weeks ago, the School Department spending plan called for cutting 31.8 full-time equivalent positions in the School Department.
At the same meeting during which councilors approved the town budget, they voted to take $250,000 out of the reserve account to be directed to the School Department as they lack the power to add to the mayor’s proposed budget and are allowed only to make cuts of the $73.5 million budget proposed by the mayor.
Mayor Richard A. Cohen and the council came to an understanding at that meeting they would seek to use the $250,000 to restore some of the positions in the School Department slated for elimination in the mayor’s proposed budget.
The School Department budget originally approved by the board for fiscal 2012 stood at $34,194,167.
The mayor said Monday that he is very happy about the support both the School Committee and the council have shown for the School Department. He said he is particularly pleased that the supplementary budget would allow for keeping classroom sizes down.
If adopted the supplementary budget would reduce the sizes of a first grade class at Granger from 26 to 17, and kindergarten classes at Robinson Park and Phelps, respectively from 25 to 19 and from 24 to 18.
“We will continue to watch every penny that we spend on the city side,” Cohen said in a prepared statement released by his office. “As mayor and chairman of the School Committee I am pleased that the Town of Agawam has made a decision to put education first while maintaining the lowest tax rate in the area.”
Cohen has avoided layoffs in the municipal sector by not filling eight vacancies.