The Montclair Board of Education met on March 6 to review its tentative 2017-18 budget, which it passed without much enthusiasm. The budget blueprint, which is being sent to the county this week but still has to be reviewed by the Board of School Estimate, reflects Interim Schools Superintendent Ronald Bolandi’s goal of doing more with less.
Superintendent Bolandi said the budget, which he worked out with Business Administrator Steve DiGeronimo, reduces staff in some schools to bring equity to the district and tries to bring more clarity and sense in scheduling paraprofessionals. While the $120.2 million budget for 2017-18 increases investments in some areas, it makes cuts in many others. Arousing some concern among members of the public was the budget’s plan to reduce paraprofessionals to 2014-15 levels. The superintendent was emphatic in stressing that the spending plan was an attempt at getting the district away from “throwing money” at problems, and he said some of the cuts should be made even without the threat of a shortfall.
Among the additions to the 2017-18 school budget are $125,000 for a world language supervisor to get the district more focused on that program, $50,000 for world language professional development and $100,000 in special-education professional development. Spending reductions include $1 million in special education out-of-district placement tuition costs, which would be offset by the additional professional-development; $500,000 in transportation, which Superintendent Bolandi credited to DiGeronimo getting a better deal with another vendor; and $1.9 million in health insurance costs thanks to DiGeromino’s work with the insurance company. In addition, the budget gives greater emphasis on support for middle-school and high-school English-language arts, elementary school science, middle-school Spanish and French, and summer programs. Line items, though, would be cut to 2015-16 levels, and one or two staffers per school, depending on the school, would be cut from schools for total savings of $1.25 million. The details of the budget are to be released on the district’s Web site.
Overall education instruction spending would total $44.3 million, $9.7 million of which would be for special education instruction.
Superintendent Bolandi also said he was looking into the possibility of sharing the assistant principal of Nishuane through the other buildings due to low enrollment there, and he aimed at improving the food service to make the school meals more nutritious and appetizing. He said he could make better use of surplus staff at Glenfield Middle School and Montclair High School beyond the staff already reduced to gap work. He said he would not reduce any more surplus staff because the budget is already balanced. One way to offset the gap is to bring more minority students into advanced-proficiency classes and use the extra staff to help them.
Funding would rely on a $112.4 million tax levy, an increase of 2.32 percent from 2016-17. The increase for would be $44.59 for every $100,000 of a house’s assessed value, with a $222.95 increase for house assessed at $500,000.
Despite Superintendent Bolandi’s assurances that students would not be affected, residents were still worried about the possible effect on special-needs students. Alma Schneider said the budget was being balanced “on the backs” of special-needs students, explaining that, before the paraprofessionals are cut, special-ed training helps the students. Responding to Sarah Blaine’s question how the large sizes of general education classes play into the reduction of the paraprofessionals, Superintendent Bolandi said the buildings should be reconfigured on account of elementary classes being too large, and the district should discuss how to reduce class size while including special-ed students going forward.
”We don’t have any space in the buildings,” he said. “I mean, I’ve tried, I went around to every building to see if I could put more special-ed programs in place, because you really don’t want to send more kids outside, you want them to be here, you really want to have effective programs here…but we’re stuck with space.
“There’s gotta be a decision by the community,” he added. “Do you look at reconfiguration of buildings? And I think that‘s a serious discussion.”
The reduction of paraprofessionals, Superintendent Bolandi said, would not have a negative impact, addressing board member Jevon Caldwell-Gross’s observation that the public may perceive that paraprofessionals are being diminished. The superintendent said there could be more efficiency in how remaining paraprofessionals are assigned. He said the scheduling of paraprofessionals caused them and the students they serve to be scattered “all over the place,” and that more efficient scheduling would make better use of them. Board member Joseph Kavesh recognized the reality of “limited coffers,” and he hoped that parents of special-ed students would not feel left out.
Superintendent Bolandi said he would prefer to stay in Montclair, but the state will not allow his interim tenure to be extended. He did say the district needed to have a serious discussion about issues such as a long-term capital budget to address its aging infrastructure, and he added that while he could not in fact stay, he was hopeful that the blueprint his final budget provided would give the district a sense of that direction it ought to go in.
The tentative budget passed unanimously. The board votes on a more definitive budget on March 13, with Board of School Estimate meetings to review the budget on March 14 and March 16, and possibly a third Board of School estimate session in April to finalize.
Kudos to Superintendent Bolandi & Business Administrator Steve DiGeronimo. Some very hard calls, but they delivered on what they said they would do with this budget. They also laid the framework & an approach for future, sustainable operating budgets to ensure meeting the long-term core performance goals of the MPS.