Alright. So. Well. Umm. Yeah. I guess I should admit that my initial reaction to the Budget Committee’s vote to propose level funding the town’s contribution to the school department was a bit too exclamatory a bit too quickly. Two related factors came into play, the first being the surprise distance of the result from what I’d expected, and the second being the terms in which the School Committee, which I’ve been watching closely, discusses its budget.
In effect, the schools receive state funding from two sources: Their own direct contribution and the increased amount that the town is able to provide. When Superintendent Bill Rearick and the Committee have discussed their budget’s relationship to “the cap,” they’ve assumed a 5% reduction in direct state aid, but the status quo on the municipal side. That means that, for Tiverton to achieve what the School Committee refers to as “the cap,” the town would have to absorb all loss of its own state aid.
In the current circumstances, that means a possible reduction, on the municipal side, of $1.66 million. You can add to that its requested increase of $864,845. Again, all of this cutting is just to keep the increase in the tax levy below 4.5%.
Frankly, the difficulty arises in the School Committee’s view of what’s “reasonable” as an employer. From a Sakonnet Times article by Tom Dalglish:
Though reluctant to comment at first, Jan Bergandy, school committee chairman, later said, “This is a blow to us, in the range of $850,000 to $900,000. It cannot be made up from (teacher) concessions alone.”
Looking at the district’s working budget documents (PDF), $900,000 would represent a 5.3% reduction of salaries plus healthcare benefits or a 6.4% reduction of salaries alone. Considering what’s been going on in the private sector — in which most residents of Tiverton make their living — that’s not at all unreasonable. More importantly, no services or programs would have to be affected, and not a single employee would have to lose his or her job.
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