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No one disagrees that you'd save money by closing a building. In Gortons case we were told the figure was a hair under $1.1 million net, with $875K coming from personnel reductions and the rest from the operational cost of maintaining the building. (80-85% of all school budgets state-wide & nationally arevsalaries and benefits, its the nature of the beast) The staff reduction figure was called into question when a committee member took a calculator to the figures provided to them of how many teachers would be needed @ aldrich and found them to be three short, thus reducing the actual staff reductions by three, thus impacting the net savings but approximately $300k. That same member found other personnel discrepancies that further called into question the actual number of positions reduced. (The average dollar value per teacher assumed was approx $100K in salary $ benefits because we do not have many low- step teachers.) The arguments by some on this issue are all over the map but the point is this. People scream that schools and municipal services should be run efficiently - like the private sector. In my view, the decision to close Gorton (an organizational asset) without first having developed a long term plan from which the best use of those assets would be determined is backwards. I'd pose this to you. If Goron closed next year and then the state mandated all day K, many, if not most, of the same critics here woul take to ther keyboards railing about how short-sighted it was to close Gorton because now we can't move the 6th graders anywhere to accommodate all day K. This school committee is publicly asking admin to come up with a long term plan for the district before they make any decisions to close any more buildings. I don't recall past school committees calling for this publicly. We closed three elementary in one fell swoop and another one a year later because of declining enrollment. All were necessary, in my opinion, but now we're at the point where we need to smarter in how we go about things in light of new curriculum, a true middle discussion, and the inevitable coming of all day K, none of which were on the table before.

From: Schools need to make cuts, but it won’t be Gorton yet

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