School Committee Candidate Comments on Budget

Hello Everyone,

I want to take a moment to comment on Monday, June 20th School Committee Budget Meeting and start off by thanking Mayor McGlynn and the School Committee for an outstanding job helping us to approve a budget for the 20011-2012 school year. That being said the real champions of the night’s meeting were the parents of the students in our community. The city hall chambers were standing room only. I am grateful for each and every parent for showing our elected officials that we do care that our school budget has been stretched as tight as it possibly can be.

The bottom line is that cuts were made. Dr. Kruger from Medford High School spoke about the importance of maintaining a support staff position (aka sub master), a data processing person, a Para security position, the addition of a guidance counselor and maintaining level funding in the student activities fund,. Examples of student activities are National Honor Society, Math, and Science Clubs. All of these after school resources help our students in the College Process and keep students involved and busy after school in a productive way. All of these items did not make it to the final budget. The only items that did make it back into next year’s budget were the support staff person and $10,000 of the current $20,000 student activities fund. These cuts will create hardship at our High School. Dr. Kruger has been doing the data entry himself for the last 8 months and I guess that will probably continue.

A few other items that were added in were the kindergarten aides (with the hope that funding from the state will be approved), a part time nurse and paras (with a reduction of hours) for our libraries. No secretaries were added at our Elementary Schools. Mr. Belson offered a suggestion of having the Special Education secretaries work out of the main offices at these schools so they can help with phone and door coverage.

Our Vocational High School’s budget cut two teachers and $10,000 in expenses for maintenance and supplies. Mr. Belson said he would find a way in our current budget to fund the maintenance and supplies. The teachers have been cut due to retirements.

There were no cuts in the Athletic Department because of the Mayor’s generosity of donating $50,000 from the golf tournament that is held annually.

I feel that the School Committee together with the dedicated hard working administration of our school, and the community present came to a reasonable compromise. Although it is not ideal, they added $100,000 from a contract savings with the custodians and the Mayor has committed to find the other $74,000 plus the $50,000 from the golf fundraiser to fund this budget.

Our quest for a ream of paper was heard. We had at least 50 reams! I hope that the community and parental involvement seen at this meeting is just the beginning. We need to make sure we elect educated individuals who will not sit back but fight for the students and educational programs in our community. We need to let our elected officials know that the Medford Public Schools is not a place that can continue to be underfunded.

Again, thank you all for coming out. We sent a message loud and clear to our community leaders. We have cut enough. We need to stop.

Thank you for getting involved!

Erin DiBenedetto
Candidate for Medford School Committee