Schools

School Committee Approves Preliminary $41.4M Budget

School Committee keeps a level service budget after loss of federal funds.

The Mansfield School Committee voted 5-0 on Tuesday to approve the preliminary budget at $41.4 million.

$40.9 of that budget is to keep level services. This means that they want to keep the same quality of service and number of teachers from the fiscal year 2012 budget.

The current FY 2013 budget was $2.9 million higher than the previous year, and school district director of finance and operations Edward Vozzella said that is because of the loss of federal assistance from the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund and jobs act has run out, and the committee all agreed that they want to keep the additional positions the next year.

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“[The loss of SFSF] winds up in salaries this year,” Vozzella said. “This is the real reason why we’re going up so much in fiscal 2013 versus fiscal year 2012.”

Aside from the level services, the committee agreed to put an additional $433,280 in the budget for additional needs. 

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The budget originally called for an extra $1.19 million, but chair Michael Trowbridge said that it was not likely that they would get that from the town.

“The reality is we don’t stand a chance of getting that this year,” he said.

Superintendent Brenda Hodges said that the additional money could be used for additional needs, like a grade five teacher in Jordan Jackson to help reduce class sizes or another computer technician to help upgrade and maintain the district’s 1,100 computers.

 The immediate result of the additional teacher would reduce class sizes in the grade from the range of 29-30 students per teacher to 25-27 students per teacher.

Vozzella said that because of projected reduction trends in enrollment over the next five years, the student teacher ratio will continue to drop over the long term as well.

“Brenda and I have been at this for a while,” he said. “We know historically what has happened [in the student population]. We’ve found that we’re [have been] extremely close in these estimates. We’re talking two or three kids per class that we’d be off. It’s worked pretty well.”

While these were the immediate concerns presented in the additional requested funds in the budget and agreed that almost certainly the funds will go to new staffers, the committee and superintendent agreed to set the dollar amount for the additional positions but not the positions themselves.

The debate on what will be needed more in the budget will continue at later meetings.


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