Easton School Committee Approves $35 Million FY '14 Operating Budget

The Easton School Committee voted to approve a FY '14 operating budget of $35,093,471 at their meeting Thursday night.

The budget represents a 4.04% increase from the current year to next year, an increase of $1,362,000.

According to officials, the majority of the bump is largely due contractual increases and increases in the cost of special education.

“We have major concern with substantial increase in cost of special education due to out of district tuitions and associated transportation costs,” said Superintendent Michael Green.

To cover those costs the district added $350,000 to the budget. An admitted estimate that they are hoping would be enough.

“This budget reflects an increase of $350,000 to help meet those costs. And I just want to make it clear that that money is in there as a placeholder that we hope will be able to cover those costs. As you well know, we have little control over the ins and outs of the out of district placement often times and the associated transportation.” Green told the committee. “This area is certainly a growing concern for us.”

The committee approved the budget figure unanymously, but seemed disappointed with the largely across-the-board level funding.

“I think not only does this budget not allow us to do anything new but I think it also puts at risk some of the things we’re doing now,” said committee chair Jane Martin.

The meeting was Martin's last as a committee member as she is not seeking re-election.

“This is at best, a holding steady budget," she said. "There are no new anythings in this budget. It won’t allow us to take on any new initiatives, things that the school committee has talked about for years and not been able to do. And we still can’t think about doing them now because the money just isn’t there."

Martin also expressed concern for some "very conservative assumptions" in the budget.

“We made assumptions around the fact that the federal money that we get won’t be reduced. If that federal money is reduced we will have to absorb those costs in our budget.

"We didn’t build in any impacts for changes in legislation. We do know there’s been changes in legislation as it relates to CORI requirements for our teachers, as it relates to out of school suspension for our students.

"We haven’t taken into consideration if are there going to be any associated costs with the new educators evaluation process and do we need to build that in,” she said.

Said committee member Donna Abelli: "It’s gotten stable…but it’s far from getting better.”

“The first vote I ever took sitting here was that $900,000 cut [in 2011] which was horrible. So we haven’t gained anything. People need to realize we’re still even to that cut, it’s not like we’ve recouped losses,” Abelli said.

According to Green, excluding contractual increases and increases for special education, the actual dollar change year over year is about $25,000.

“The requests and the needs, the wants, the desires, we have several programs that we’d like to advance but obviously if everything is level funded last year’s budget is going to be this year’s budget. With the exception of special education that we put aside and a few other things,” Green said.

Committee member Colleen Less was not in attendance at the meeting.

The school's budget will be worked in with the overall town budget. At the last Board of Selectmen meeting, selectmen and Finance Committee members discussed the budget, which is still facing a $591,678 deficit. Town Officials will need to balance the budget before taking it to Town Meeting voters in May.