The All-Island School Committee approved a $7.5 million shared services budget at its meeting Thursday.
Although there are a number of necessary increases to line items relating to contractual agreements and additional support personnel, Superintendent Matt D’Andrea said budget planners have been working hard to reduce that figure.
The increases in the FY22 budget compared with FY21 were able to be cut from approximately $847,000 to around $597,000.
With an FY21 budget of about $6.9 million, the newly approved budget is an 8.67 percent increase from the previous year.
D’Andrea said schools are expanding the school psychologist position in order to divy up administrative work and provide additional services for students. He said schools could maintain the current number of psychologists, and if schools fall behind in the workload, they could contract out to the Cape Cod Collaborative to have someone fill in the gap.
Additionally, D’Andrea said, the school district has been looking to slightly increase the role of the speech and language therapist, but they were able to find some grant money to cover that additional expense.
Schools also cut the increase for the education support professional (ESP) role, although there will still be an approximately $98,000 increase in that area.
“Is there a risk involved with cutting the ESP? Yes. This is a little bit of a moving target, because we could have students move in or out of the district. If they move out, we might have extra personnel; if they move in, we might have a shortage,” D’Andrea explained.
An additional administrative support personnel (ASP) will also be brought on to support English language learner (ELL) director Leah Palmer.
D’Andrea said the population of ELLs is increasing, and there are currently no support personnel in that role in the central office.
“The ASP would help with the large amount of administrative work, and allow Leah to work actively within schools,” D’Andrea said. He added that ELL students are particularly high-risk for underperformance and school dropout. “I would call it an underserved population; they are the group at our high school that has the highest dropout rate, so I think we need to support this position,” D’Andrea said.
The total budget increase for that position is $55,000, including other post employment and benefits, according to finance manager Mark Friedman.
One of the most important increases in the budget is a new accounting position that would support Friedman in his role as the school business administrator. “Mark needs help, he needs a full-time accountant. It is a worthwhile investment for this district,” D’Andrea said.
The COVID line of the budget has also been reduced from $64,000 to $25,000, in order to make some of these necessary adjustments. Friedman said he felt as though the schools still needed some level of contingency, but considering the tradeoffs budget planners were making on some other areas, “it didn’t seem prudent to keep that COVID line where it was, considering it wasn’t for concrete needs.”
Clarifying the role of the health and safety committee
Edgartown board of health agent Matt Poole said at the meeting that the health and safety committee issued a two-page document laying out guidelines and a scope of work that describes their role as an advisory entity.
“It became clear that school administration and school committees were seeking clear decisions and clear guidance,” Poole said. “It was also clear we were getting to the point where we were never going to please everyone with the decisions we were making.”
At that time, when the virus was starting to further affect the Island school population, Poole said what was being reported out of the health and safety committee wasn’t accurately and fully reflecting what happened in the separate health meetings.
“We felt it would benefit everyone, those of us on the committee, school administration, staff, if we could actually generate something you could study, refer back to, and have a record of proceedings,” Poole said.
Poole also noted the great deal of time spent in school meetings by health officials, and D’Andrea explaining the stance of the health and safety group, and the recommendations they made at prior meetings.
“We are asking that we be given specific questions with enough time in advance that we can actually do the question justice and report back to you with a clear reflection,” Poole said, as opposed to having folks ask questions at school committee meetings and having to answer them “on the fly.”
Health officials have, according to Poole, already been working long hours to juggle a multitude of responsibilities, and spending hours in school committee meetings adds a great deal of time to that already busy schedule.
“The reality is we have been working 12 hour days for weeks now,” Poole said. “Part of our goal is to not have to show up at a school committee meeting and spontaneously respond on the fly, when we are all super-busy, to complex questions.”