The target for the School Department budget for the coming fiscal year is $28 million, down slightly from the current year's budget.
Susan L. WrightNORTHAMPTON – The city and the School Department are each trying to close budget gaps of about $330,000 as they head into the home stretch for submitting their fiscal 2012 numbers.
On Thursday, Business Manager Susan Wright told the School Committee that Mayor Mary Clare Higgins has promised to make up about half of the $1.4 gap between projected revenues and expenses for the department in 2012. Wright said the loss of $877,000 in one-time federal grants from last years accounts for much of the gap. The city also used $283,000 in reserves from a special education fund to balance last tear’s school budget. That money will not be available either for fiscal 2012.
Wright told the committee she was able to halve the remaining gap by cutting portions of teaching, administrative and support jobs. The subtraction of 7.88 full-time-equivalency jobs accounts for most of another $331,940 in savings. That leaves a gap of $333,021, which Wright said will have to be addressed by cutting additional jobs.
Although some teachers will lose hours with the 7.88 reduction in full-time equivalency jobs, it is unlikely that any individual teacher will lose an entire job as the budget now stands. The school system’s kindergartens will each lose an aide, however, leaving the kindergartens with one teacher and one aide apiece. Wright said the department would likely have cut those positions regardless of the budget gap because of decreased enrollment. Some of the aides who lose their jobs will probably end up working in a new autism program at the John F. Kennedy Middle School, Wright said.
The target for the fiscal 2012 School Department budget is $28 million, down slightly from the $28.16 fiscal 2011 budget.
Also on Thursday, Higgins unveiled preliminary figures for the city’s fiscal 2012 budget, which projects expenditures at $77.1 million and revenues at $76.8 million. The resulting gap totals $336,204. Finance Director Christopher B. Pile said the $748,868 that Higgins has promised the School Department will have to come out of other departmental budgets, with the cuts being distributed as evenly as possible.
“We’re trying to mitigate the impact by spreading the pain across the whole city,” Pile said.
The city budget projection comes with some caveats, Pile said. It assumes there will be no wage growth in 2012, an issue that is still pending as Higgins negotiates with the city’s unions. The city has also projected a net decrease of $188,000 in health care costs, although Pile said this is also under negotiation.