School budget request lowered
By Melissa Muntz Community Reporter

Shrewsbury - The Shrewsbury School Committee is lowering its fiscal year (FY) 2009 budget request to $46.33 million, which represents an 8.5 percent increase over FY 2008.

The committee had initially requested a 9.7 percent increase to $46.82 million, but has scaled back, which committee members said they've been able to do based on new enrollment information.

With the 8.5 percent increase, the School Department would add 16.4 full-time equivalency (FTE) positions, while reducing 17.5 FTE positions for a net loss of 1.1 FTE positions.

Among the proposed additions to staff are 2.4 additional FTE at the High School, .3 FTE for Chinese language instruction at Oak Middle School, 2.3 positions at Parker Road Preschool, additional psychologist and specialist hours at the elementary school level, and 10 FTE district positions.

Positions that would be eliminated include eight Special Education aides, 7.5 elementary school aides and 1.5 kindergarten positions.

Other modifications to cut the budget include $140,000 in cuts to curriculum and instructional materials, taking $150,000 from the district Circuit Breaker Account to fund out-of-district Special Education tuitions, and opting to hire a proposed assistant Special Education director only if grant funds allow.

If the budget is not funded at the 8.5 percent increase, district officials detailed what that would mean for school staff during a budget hearing Feb. 27.

In that scenario, 15 additional staff would be removed from the budget. Coolidge, Spring Street and Paton elementary schools would each lose one FTE. Floral Street Elementary School would lose two FTE, as would Sherwood Middle School and Oak Middle School.

The High School would lose 2.6 current FTE as well as 2.4 proposed FTE, and one district allied arts teacher would be eliminated.

These cuts in staff would result in average class size increases at almost every school, with second- through fourthgrade classes seeing an average of 26 or 27 per class. Half-day kindergarten classes would have an average of 24 kids, middle school classes would range from 25 to 27 students on average, and 20 to 25 class sections would be cut from the High School course catalog.

If funded at less than 8.5 percent, some school officials said they would request that the Board of Selectmen put a Proposition 2-1/2 override question on the ballot in May.