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FY 11 Budget Preserves Teachers’ Positions

By Scott MacKeen
Staff Writer
5/6/10
With the coming of the new fiscal year in July, Milton public school teachers can breath a sigh of relief.

Under the fiscal year 2011 budget for the School Department, which Town Meeting approved this week, no teacher currently under contract will be handed a layoff notice.

However, some other positions are still being eliminated in order to achieve a balanced budget.

The FY 11 budget gives the department a bottom line of roughly $34.7 million, an increase of 1.3 percent from $32.9 million in FY 10. It is enough to restore 7.2 teaching positions that were up for elimination in an earlier budget proposal, but school officials have said they need $35.5 million in order to bring the same services into next year. Contractual teacher raises of 3.5 percent amount to about $1.5 million of the cost increases from FY 10 to FY 11.

The teaching positions being restored under the FY 11 budget include:
• A family-and-consumer elective course teacher ($81,436) at Milton High School.
• A classroom core teacher ($55,000) at Pierce Middle School.
• An 0.6 elementary school enrichment specialist ($26,872).
• Two world-language classroom teachers ($111,000).
• A full-day kindergarten teacher ($55,000).
• A language-based special education teacher ($55,000).
• A 0.5 preschool teacher ($27,500).
• An 0.1 art-enrichment teacher ($7,000).

School Committee members still have concerns about the positions that are being eliminated in FY 11, including the loss of the high school’s director of guidance.

“I know we have no choice. But that’s very difficult to accept. I’m very, very concerned,” member Kristan Bagley Jones said at the committee’s April 28 meeting.

“The director of guidance is still the liaison with the parents. The loss of that position is huge,” committee member Glenn Pavlicek said.

Ken Aubert, the director of guidance, makes $85,411 per year, according to a budget document distributed at the meeting. There are currently five guidance counselors serving at the high school.

“These positions are going to have to be assumed by people who are already full time and giving 150 percent,” said School Superintendent Mary Gormley.

Other key administrative positions slated to be eliminated include an assistant principal position at Pierce – a $76,000 position – and the assistant principal position at Glover Elementary School – a $43,000 position. Gormley said Glover is the only elementary school still with an assistant principal.

The School Committee has yet to reorganize with a new chairman, as is the tradition after a town election. Newly elected member Denis Keohane was not present April 28 because he had attended a previously scheduled Toastmaster’s event at the town library.