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Wow, there is a glaring problem that I see with the numbers and it doesn't take a math wizard to see it. The percentage given is not appropriate. If you look at the total population of the schools, 300 of 9700 students is 3%. How do they get .5%????? Maybe they should have the ALAP kids show the school committee and administration how to figure out the percentages, they can certainly get that right. In fact, the school committee shouldn't be comparing the 300 against the total population of the schools as the elementary schools have their own portion of the budget and the secondary schools have their own portion of the budget. I believe there are approximately 4800 elementary students and the 300 students are a part of that budget. So 300 out of 4800 is 6.2% not .5 percent.

If they want to look at a fair comparison $325K is 0.002241of $145,000,000. Alap is 2 one-thousandths of a percent of the total budget. They are putting 2 one-thousandths of the budget into 6.2% of the elementary kids.

I had asked for the School website to be updated several times while on the committee to save money on time, paper and toner. $15,000 was set aside in the budget. The website was not revamped. Where did the money go that was set aside for the website.

Do you know we spend about $35K on toner for the elementary budget and $35 on toner for the secondary budget.

Do you know that on the first day of school my child came home with almost 35 different notices, all of which could have been put online? and forms that could have been filled out online?

35 pages per kid X 9700 kids is 339,500 pages of paper that come home THE FIRST DAY. That is 679 reams of paper. How much toner is used to make those pages, one toner cartridge prints approximately 12,000 pages? How long would teachers and staff have to sit in front of the copy machine to print 339,000 copies? At one copy a second, that comes out to 94 hours spent standing on front of the copy machine. This is 94 hours that could be spent doing other things. That is almost 2.5 weeks of "work" spent making copies. When you add up the time ($2403 if the person makes 50K annually), the paper (679 Reams at $5 a ream is $3395), the toner alone (the average toner prints 10-12,000 copies, 29 toners at $100, $2900). The first day of school costs in paper notices that most parents throw out, $8698. All this information could be put on the website, GO Green? There are many places to save money.

I suggested having parents who drop off and pick up their kids to sign a waiver allowing the number of buses to be reduced. Each bus costs $65,000. How many have seen empty buses pull up to the school to let off 8-10 kids when the bus fits 55 children? If 5 buses were cut from the transportation it would save $325,000. Transportation was outsourced 2 years ago, why is there still a director of transportation? That is $95,000 salary if you include benefits.

There are many places to save money. The school committee can still find the money and choose to save this program. The amount of money that administration claims will be saved is incorrect. The number of students served by this program is stated incorrectly. Quite frankly, the money saved has already been spent on salary increases given out in February with the new contract and 2 members of the committee didn't even know we were in negotiations. Communications is the key to running any successful enterprise. Communicate to the committee that this program has value and should be kept if at all possible.

Finally, the title for this article is wrong. It is written this way to divide people. The title should simply have been, "50 Year-Old School program to be Cut", or "Warwick Accelerated Program to be Cut". To say "Smart kids" program to be cut is offensive to me. Two of my 3 children were in the program, and all 3 of them are extremely smart. Each kid has their own talent and expresses it in different ways.

From: Loss of smart kids program questioned

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