After his presentation to the Belmont School Committee Tuesday, Jan. 11, Superintendent of Schools Dr. George Entwistle said he was having a difficult time choosing the right word to describe next year’s preliminary school budget.

“I can’t decided between grim and dire,” Entwistle told Belmont Patch after the meeting held in the Chenery Middle School’s auditorium.

From the reaction to his report from school committee members and those attending the meeting, either word would do.

 In his hallmark steady, monotone delivery, Entwistle described a school landscape where entire programs, services and many jobs would simply disappear or be reduced and made ineffective.

An anxious murmur rose from the three-dozen in attendance when Entwistle’s PowerPoint presentation illustrated the actual impact on elementary schools.

Under the preliminary fiscal 2012 budget, the new school year will welcome the elimination of all arts and general music programs, reduction of physical education by half, letting go teachers, limiting reading support and guidance services and reducing clerical staff.

The cuts were equally stark at the middle and high schools.  The Middle School would see the elimination of foreign languages at grades 5 and 6, the lose of three full-time teaching positions, and a reduction in the number of music, fine arts electives and phys. ed.

At the High School, electives in foreign languages and social studies will be eliminated as would freshmen sports as well as the end of professional library support.

District-wide, students and teachers will see the reduction of instructional aide support, tutorial services and still more cuts in supplies, text books and equipment that have seen reduction in those line items for several years running.

“I’m horrified and sobered by the impact (the available revenue budget) will have throughout the system,” said Committee member Laurie Graham.

$3 million hole to fill

The collective reaction from those in the auditorium reflected the nearly $3 million gap between the fiscal year 2012 available revenue budget – $40,565,000 million set aside for the schools from the town budget by the Warrant Committee – and a $43,526,000 level services budget that Entwistle said would allow the schools “ongoing viability” by improving outcomes for all students while sustaining and supporting continuous improvement district wide.

The preliminary budget – created over the past two months by Entwistle and the district’s Leadership Council made up of senior staff, the district’s principals and financial experts – was developed by viewing all the systems, structures and programs and then reducing, modifying and eliminating them ways that would have the least impact on students.

In addition, the Council also reduced the cost of employee benefit and professional and non-professional personnel costs.

Yet after praising his team for creating the new budget, Entwistle declared the available revenue budget – which is an increase of only $862,500 from the fiscal 2011 budget – “does not provide sufficient funds to ensure the level of quality and services needed in the Belmont Public Schools to prepare all students for the future in the way that the Community expects.”

A work in progress

Ann Rittenburg, School Committee chairwoman, told the committee and residents that "a preliminary budget is a very dynamic thing, a work in progress and this is not the final budget.”

But if the district is left to implement the available revenue budget, a litany of issues including employee contracts, school accreditation, state requirements and graduation standards, will need to be reviewed in light of the drastic cuts and reductions in services and programs.

“I can only imagine that our ability to comply with all of those things that I listed and more will be severely compromised,” Rittenburg said.

Rittenburg said as the school committee’s representative to the Warrant Committee, she will advise the 16 member group headed by Elizabeth Allison that the funds it subscribed to the school department was “simply inadequate” and “the fact is going to have devastating consequences in this town.”

“This budget has to be the beginning of the conversation which can’t just be with each other. We have to be talking to the Board of Selectmen and the Warrant Committee and Town Meeting members and those in town,” said Committee member Becky Vose.

Rittenburg also said she will ask for a joint meeting of both committees to discuss the issues at hand.

Rittenburg and other members of the committee said that the only practical way in bridging the $3 million budget breach is through a multi-prong approach: securing a more advantageous funding appropriation from the Warrant Committee, increase fees, creating a more efficient system, across the board cuts and, equally important, garner increased revenue through a possible override.

Rittenburg said if the community wants their children attending outstanding schools that have been a hallmark of the Belmont district, “they will need to come to the fore by agreeing to increase the taxes they pay on real estate.”

“There is no other way to get to the numbers we need to get to without it,” she said, although noting that only the Board of Selectmen can authorize a Proposition 2 1/2 override.

“To think we can do it by one approach, that we can find it by looking in only one area, is simply magical thinking,” said Rittenburg.