January is
budget month for the MERSD School Committee and balancing the FY15 Budget is going
to be a challenging task. Over the
next few weeks, the School Committee and district team will continue to work
collaboratively with the towns of Essex and Manchester to refine the numbers and
reach a final budget request. The challenge before us is addressing a multi-year
shift in enrollment that has caused non-discretionary spending to increase.
The Manchester Essex resident student population has grown 24% or 281 students
in six years. This is greater than the current student population of the Essex
Elementary school.
As we
outlined at the Tentative Budget Public
Hearing on December 11, 2013, the district is facing three structural
issues [Declining School Choice Revenue, Dependency on Reserves, and Long-term
Liabilities/OPEB (Other Post-Employment Benefits) Funding] that will require
difficult choices to be made. Enrollment growth and the diversification
of the student body are key drivers in our budget development. For the
past three years, the district has been successful at balancing its goal of
addressing the impact of increased resident enrollment with the need to
maintain a low assessment for the towns. In contrast to the three
year average of 4.8% annual assessment for fiscal years 2008-2011, each
year since we have worked to make targeted increases to staff to maintain class
size ratios. At the same time, we have introduced
programs to address the changing needs of our students while maintaining an average
annual assessment to towns of 2.0%. This was accomplished through increased
Chapter 70 funds from the state, use of reserve monies and internal reductions,
and reorganizations to achieve efficiencies.
What We
Have Been Doing
- All available resources have been used to:
- Maintain class size benchmarks
- Deliver on District Improvement Plan Goals
- Maintain a robust specialist and elective program for students
- Support an extensive athletics and extra-curricular program
- Established a joint school-towns budget collaboration team
- Sought an unsuccessful operational override
- Generated funds through efficiencies, tradeoffs, and reorganizations to maintain or improve the current level of services provided
- Sought and won grant funding to offset/support investment in strengthening district specialized programming to keep tax dollars in district and manage budget growth
- Utilized district reserve funds to keep town assessments low while continuing to deliver quality of services expected from parents and students
Although
we continue to seek internal efficiencies in order to maintain class size and
program offerings, we have reached a point where the overarching budgetary
issues must be addressed. We encourage you to visit the MERSD Budget page
(www.mersd.org – Quick Link: Budget) to
review our presentations and to learn more about the goals and the challenges
we are facing. We also hope that you will consider increasing your
involvement with the schools. We welcome your participation and
input as we work to make MERSD a world-class district.
A great
way to join the conversation and learn about what's going on is to attend a
School Committee meeting. Here’s a look at the topics being
addressed in the next month.
Tuesday
January 21st |
Full
Business Meeting
|
Tuesday
January 28th |
Full
Business Meeting
|
Tuesday
February 4th
Essex Elementary
|
FY15
Budget Hearing @ Essex Elementary School
|
