By a 4-1 vote Thursday night, with Karen Bachus dissenting, the School Committee approved a $161,135,284 fiscal year 2017 school budget, which was presented to the mayor yesterday.

The budget includes all-day Kindergarten at all elementary schools; increased staffing in the form of math interventionists, social workers, middle school content leadership, and elementary nursing; Chromebooks for all students in grades 6-8; 21st century modern classrooms at the junior highs; new language labs at both high schools; and the reinstatement of middle school sports.

Compared to the most recently approved revised FY 2017 budget of March 8, the approved budget has decreased 1.25 percent, or $2,049,279, while including the addition of new initiatives, the elimination of reliance on prior year surplus to balance the budget, and maintaining the current level of community support at $119,482,464.

This was accomplished by consolidating schools at the secondary level and “re-purposing program dollars to meet higher level academic expectations.”

Warwick Veterans High School is being consolidated and turned into a super junior high school. Vets students will be split between Pilgrim and Toll Gate. Gorton and Aldrich junior highs will also be consolidated, with those students being split between Winman and Vets. Gorton will be re-purposed as administrative office space.

As a result of consolidation, the school department projects a net staff reduction of 51.52 full-time equivalents (FTEs), which includes administrators, secretaries, and custodians in addition to teachers. There will be a total of nine assistant principals in the district: three at each high school, two at Warwick Vets, and one at Winman.

According to Chief Budget Officer Anthony Ferrucci, there would be a net salary cost reduction of $4,294,713 and a fringe benefit cost reduction of $1,554,346. One other notable cost reduction is in the amount of $3,183,726 due to not relying on prior year surplus to balance the budget, as has been past practice.

Prior to budget approval, the committee voted on a list of contract awards, all of which were unanimously approved, with the exception of the Mutual Link communications security system at a cost of $378,254.72, which was approved by a 4-1 vote, with Jennifer Ahearn dissenting, saying she would have preferred exploring opportunities for grant funding to cover the system.

The system would allow direct access between schools and first responders such as police and fire in the event of an emergency, and would give first responders the ability to tap into the school camera system to see what’s going on inside or outside of the buildings. First responders would only have access once the system is triggered, which would be done via “soft button” activation through a smart phone application.

Other contract awards included: $526,122 for Chromebooks for students grades 6-8; $19,855.53 for school administration desktop computers; $72,412 for school administration laptop computers; $58,116.29 for network switching equipment at Pilgrim; $44,870 for network switching equipment at Gorton; $75,096 for iMac digital photo labs; $8,830 for the replacement of bulbs in 20 Epson overhead projectors; and $255,702.34 for the installation of security camera video equipment at all secondary schools.

The only attempted budget amendment came from Bachus, who wanted to reinstate the Reading Recovery program at an approximate cost of $120,000. The amendment failed by a 4-1 vote, with Bachus the lone vote in favor of reinstatement.

Bachus described the Reading Recovery program as a short-term one-on-one intervention for first-graders that helps them not only learn to read, but love reading.

The alternative to Reading Recovery are programs such as Orton-Gillingham and Wilson reading programs, in which reading specialists work with students in small groups instead of one-on-one and are more of a long-term intervention.

“Students in groups don’t excel as quickly as they do in Reading Recovery,” Bachus said, adding that $120,000 is “a small price to pay for the huge strides made by students with Reading Recovery.”

Many parents and teachers have pleaded with the committee not to eliminate the Reading Recovery program, arguing it’s a successful program and provides students with improved self-esteem and self-confidence and allows them to be more focused and assertive in the classroom, leading to an improved homework process.

However, Superintendent Philip Thornton argues that a significant portion of the student population, mainly students in grades 4-6, are not being consistently served by reading specialists because they have to spend so much time with first-graders in a one-on-one role.

“Forty-five percent of students in grade 2 are where they need to be [with reading],” Thornton said. “By redeploying reading teachers to Reading Recovery, we’re effectively saying we’re not serving 342 students in other grades.”

Kathleen Desrosiers, coordinator of English Language Arts, said there are currently 22.5 full-time equivalent reading specialists in the district that serve students in grades 1-3. They provide anywhere from 12 to 20 weeks of service to a student in Reading Recovery, depending on student needs. They work with between eight to 12 students a year, usually four in the first half of the year and four in the second.

Desrosiers said she believes in the Reading Recovery program and sees the need for it, but in order to be viable across the district it would require additional personnel.

When Ahearn asked how many additional specialists would be needed, Desrosiers said she didn’t have a firm number because Reading Recovery had been taken out of the budget.

“We requested eight additional staff two years ago,” Desrosiers said. “We would need less than that now, but I don’t have a definitive number because it was taken out of the budget.”

Assuming that 10 additional staff would be needed, Ahearn said it would cost more than $1 million to keep Reading Recovery intact and hire additional staff.

School Committee Chairwoman Beth Furtado said eliminating Reading Recovery doesn’t eliminate services to students, but rather redeploys reading specialists and changes how those services are delivered to students so that all students that require assistance are served.

Darlene Netcoh, English teacher and department head at Toll Gate, disputes the numbers and statistics used by Thornton in favor of eliminating Reading Recovery.

“You can’t use fall stats because there’s a learning dip,” she said. “You need to look at the December and May STAR [test] scores, which were higher.”

Netcoh said when Reading Recovery was removed in Woonsocket, there was no one left to meet the needs of the lowest-achieving students. Students were put into small groups, where they made slower progress, widening the gap, and resulting in students not making it out of the program. Retention rates also skyrocketed, she said.