Having listened to budget presentations from department managers last week, the School Committee is prepared to vote on the superintendent’s recommended $166,605,780 budget for fiscal year 2016 at a meeting on Monday, April 27 before sending it to the mayor and City Council for approval by the May 1 deadline.

The budget includes a 2.1 percent cost increase of $3,478,121 in expenditures over the adopted revised FY 2015 budget approved by the committee March 18. With inclusion of the FY 2015 surplus of $57,751, the school department is in need of $3,420,370 in added revenue to maintain a balanced budget for FY 2016.

However, Chief Budget Officer Anthony Ferrucci said the net effect of losing carryover funds in the amount of $3,973,931, as well as reductions in some other revenue areas, means the school department will need to ask the city for $7,075,780 in local allocation funds. The total request in city funds would be $126.6 million.

EXPENDITURES

Ferrucci said the total notable expenditure cost increase is $5,271,853. This is due to the following: a 25 percent increase in debt service ($46,000); a 2 percent increase in transportation costs due to the addition of a new bus route and statewide contract increases ($229,869); a 6 percent increase in medical costs based on national health care claims ($902,631); a 2.5 percent increase in state pension costs ($328,353); and $3,765,000 in new initiatives, which includes $388,000 for secondary level program expansion; $245,000 for a legal services office; $656,000 for an update to the math textbook curriculum; $257,000 for professional development; $723,000 for Buildings and Grounds projects; and $1,496,320 for the technology hardware plan.

Ferrucci said due to $1,793,732 in cost reductions proposed by directors and budget managers, the department was able to reduce expenditures to the $3,478,121.

SECONDARY LEVEL PROGRAM EXPANSION

The secondary level program expansion includes the addition of a teacher in the cosmetology program at the Warwick Area Career and Technical Center, the cost of which is expected to be covered by the increase in tuition from out-of-district students, as well as three additional teachers, one at each junior high school, as part of a career and technology elective.

“We’re attempting to expand student interest and exposure, so we wish to implement an introductory course for career and technology as an elective,” said Dennis Mullen, director of secondary education, during his budget presentation.

Ferrucci said hiring three additional technology teachers would cost in excess of $165,000 plus fringe benefits.

In addition to expanding career and tech opportunities, the school department would also like to expand its successful credit retrieval program by offering full credit retrieval at all three high schools, which requires two additional part-time stipends to complement the existing person, at a cost of $148,000.

LEGAL SERVICES OFFICE

Ferrucci explained that the $245,000 for a legal services office would be required to cover the cost of a staff attorney and secretarial support as part of establishing a Legal Services department separate and apart from the existing Human Resources office, where Rosemary Healey currently serves as director and schools legal counsel.

“The budget was built with the expectation that the managing of outside law firms would also report to this position. Due to this, a budget was prepared for the office, moving some lines from Human Resources to the new office,” Ferrucci said. “The total cost increase is $245,000.”

Ferrucci said the $245,000 includes a staff cost increase of $225,275 plus fringe benefits and office support costs of $2,500.

MATH CURRICULUM

Addressing the $656,000 to update the math textbook curriculum, Anne Siesel, assistant director of curriculum, said $25,000 will be set aside to replenish elementary textbooks as needed, but the rest of the money will go toward purchasing Google Chromebooks to allow students to take advantage of an electronic math book through open source software and websites.

“We’re piloting a math adoption in 18 classrooms for grades 6 through 11 currently and we’re planning another pilot with a group of teachers in the fall,” she said. “Students and teachers will have access to free online math books as well as websites and open source applications.”

Mullen added that everything is aligned to Common Core standards and content is updated regularly.

Siesel said $650,000 would cover the cost of one Chrome cart per classroom, with 30 Chromebooks per cart, and a total of 58 to 60 carts.

School Committee Chairwoman Jennifer Ahearn asked if students would have access to the Chromebooks at home.

“The cost does not include a device to take home,” Mullen said.

Siesel said students would have the option of using computers in the school library or public libraries if they don’t have one at home.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Ferrucci said the $227,000 in professional development funds would cover the cost of substitute requests to allow teachers to leave the classroom to attend professional development sessions. During department budget presentations, it became apparent that finding substitute teachers to adequately cover for teachers attending training sessions has been a real challenge.

“We depend quite heavily on subs because we bring teachers together during the school day to create lesson plans,” said Kathleen Desrosiers, coordinator for English Language Arts. “We used to be able to get 25 [teachers] at once, now we’re down to 15 and we’re lucky to get seven or eight when cold and flu season hits. We have to do [trainings] more often to reach more teachers.”

Healey said finding enough substitutes in the past wasn’t as much of a problem because teachers weren’t attending nearly as many training sessions.

“We didn’t have trainings 180 days a year like we do now,” she said. “We have teachers out 40 to 80 days doing trainings.”

Healey said there needs to be better planning with regard to the number of training days and available substitutes.

“On average, 90 to 110 teachers, out of 960, are out per day,” she said.

Desrosiers agreed with Healey that “people are making Herculean efforts to have subs available.”

“We also offer after school workshops for teachers,” she said. “We need to try to plan more effectively.”

Healey said it’s more effective financially to pay substitutes and do trainings during the day than to hold workshops after school.

When asked if substitute pay needed to be increased to attract more substitute teachers, Healey said the pay is commensurate with other districts.

“Subs are looking for opportunities to find employment and the best way to do that is to sub,” she said. “We go to college job fairs and try to recruit the best and brightest, and they’re happy to work with us if we can provide steady substitute work.”

School Committee Vice Chairman Eugene Nadeau said he didn’t understand how the school department could operate at a 10 percent staff loss every day.

“It has to be terribly ineffective when you’re having subs teaching classes week in, week out,” he said.

Ahearn agreed.

“The ability for subs to provide day-to-day rigorous instruction is not there and it’s unfortunate,” she said. “When we held after school workshops last year and asked teachers what they wanted, we didn’t get the support, so I don’t know what the answer is.”

Federal Grant Program Coordinator Sara Monaco defended the trainings.

“All testing is not created equal. We’re in an anti-testing period right now, which is targeted at PARCC [Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers],” she said. “The data analysis and assessments are used because teachers that use it make gains in six to seven months versus a year for those without.”

Monaco said the data and analysis doesn’t mean anything if it isn’t used properly, which is why $67,000 of her budget is targeted at getting teachers together to make sure the data is being used properly.

“The numbers and data tell a story about a student. You put it all together to see what’s going on,” she said.

Committee member Terri Medeiros said she feels data and analysis is put upon school departments from above, “so we have to put with it.”

Ahearn said she understands the concept of Common Core to have the same thing being taught throughout the country to ensure everyone is learning the same thing at the same time.

“How we deliver that is another discussion,” she said.

BUILDINGS AND GROUNDS IMPROVEMENTS

Ferrucci said the $873,000 for Buildings and Grounds projects includes $650,000 for the replacement of 13 boilers; $90,000 for Pilgrim High School fields and gym floor; $25,000 for the Toll Gate High School gym floor; $8,000 for fencing; and $50,000 for miscellaneous projects to be determined.

Director of Buildings and Grounds David LaPlante said building improvements is the biggest line item in his budget, adding that with a lack of capital improvement funds available, the $873,000 could be easily quadrupled to address the needs of the district.

“I included a partial list of needs, such as boilers, field work and sewer line work,” he said during his budget presentation. “There’s a significant need for quite a bit more, but this is a good start.”

With so much work needing to be done on school buildings, Nadeau asked why LaPlante cut the building improvements line item in half.

“This addresses the absolute priorities, but there are many others not included. We can only try to fix it in small chunks,” he said, adding that deferred maintenance has been going on for years.

When Nadeau asked for an estimate in terms of how much it would cost to address all issues in all school buildings, LaPlante said, “If you wrote me a check for $20 million, I’d have no problem spending it.”

TECHNOLOGY HARDWARE PLAN

Ferrucci said the two largest initiatives of the $1,496,320 technology hardware plan are the purchase of Google Chromebooks for all ninth-graders and all high school teachers in the district for $523,600 and $750,000 for a virtual desktop infrastructure and servers. Other initiatives include $161,190 for peripheral equipment for high school teachers; $61,530 in department-based hardware requests; and $100,000 for planned device replacements throughout the district.

GRIM OUTLOOK

Ahearn said she expects the committee will have to revisit the budget and make cuts.

“Seven million dollars is an extremely large amount of money and I don’t expect the mayor and council will endorse it,” she said.

Ferrucci pointed out that while the school department requested an additional $3.4 million from the city last year, it received $400,000.

Nadeau said there would be no problem with the $4 million in added expenses if Warwick received what it’s rightfully due from the state.

“We used to be level with Cranston. Now they’re at $51 million and we’re at $36 million,” he said. “We need to have every representative and senator in Warwick at the April 27 meeting and let it sink into their heads what we’re getting and what we should be getting.”