By Scott MacKeen
Times Staff
9/4/08

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If approved by Town Meeting, the article would move around $385,000 appropriated for the school department last spring to the town’s general fund.
Town Administrator Kevin Mearn said the movement of funds was proposed to “essentially balance the books” after the legislature passed a home-rule petition that gives the school department control over the town’s federal Medicaid reimbursement funds. Previously, the funds had been absorbed into the town’s general fund and considered as revenue in the overall operating budget. The new law moves that money from the general fund into a revolving school account, creating what Warrant Committee Chair Tom Hurley called an “unbalanced budget.”
Hurley added that the town must return the money to the general fund because the tax rates can’t be certified with an unbalanced budget.
“We had had several conversations with schools,” he said. He said the problem was that “nobody thought the home-rule petition was going to pass” and that town officials could not predict a $385,000 reduction from the general fund when discussing the FY 09 budget.
“The problem is that (the petition) didn’t pass during FY 08. By the time we had formulated the FY 09 budget for the schools it still hadn’t passed,” he said.
School Committee member Mary Kelly, who heads a financial sub-committee, said she brought sub-committee recommendations to the meeting with an expectation that the money would be there.
“I think to have opened and closed a warrant without even (consulting us) is what worries me,” she said at the meeting.
Seeking to “set a tone of open communication,” Kelly suggested that the School Committee meet with the Selectmen and the Warrant Committee to discuss the article.
So on Sept. 2 Selectmen Chair Kathy Fagan, Administrator Kevin Mearn and several members of the Warrant Committee attended the School Committee meeting to discuss the issue.
Fagan said she will make a motion to reopen the warrant at the Sept. 4 Selectmen meeting, for the purpose of discussing a new article voted by the School Committee. The article seeks to allocate some of the town’s free cash to the school department to ease budget concerns.
The School Committee voted to adopt Kelly’s recommendation to allocate around $103,000 from the reimbursement money to fund two part-time employees for Tucker Elementary and Pierce Middle School to help with MCAS performance. Committee member Lynda-Lee Sheridan requested, and the committee approved, an additional aide for the same purpose, bringing the total to around $154,000.
The committee also approved the hiring of
four part-time aides for English classes in grades
four and five at the Collicot and Cunningham schools.