School Enrollment Rise Could Influence Financial Task Force Calculations

When Belmont Assistant Superintendent Janice Darias gave the latest breakout report analyzing school enrollment at the Tuesday, Nov. 12, Belmont School Committee meeting, there were no surprises: there's more kids coming into the district.

Lots more.

Taken in total, there are approximately 140 students more student as a total net gain through the 13 grades – kindergarten to 12th grade – on Oct. 1 as compared to the same time last year, nearly topping 4,140 students, according to Darias.

Noting that "no good deed goes unpunished," Belmont has become a town and school district that families want to live in and for their children to be educated. And "while that is a positive, it does provide for us challenges" with the increase in students in each school, said School Superintendent Dr. Thomas Kingston.

And the schools are finding themselves with classrooms filled with students. In the four elementary schools, there are 61 more students (a total of 1,762) in already crowded facilities, with a big group of kindergarteners – 341 five-year-olds running about – and a fourth grade class of 350 students nestled between 316 fifth and third graders. 

The result is that none of the class sizes for kindergarten through fourth grade meet the class-size guidelines established several years ago and approved by the School Committee.

Fore instance, while the district guidelines call for second grade class sizes to be between 19 and 23 students, you'll find 23 or 24 kids in each second grade classroom in the elementary schools.

"So all of the classroom sizes are outside the range in K through 4," said Darias.

With 318 fifth graders at the Chenery Middle School, their average class size is a whopping 26 per classroom despite guidelines that they are between 20 and 24, said Darias.

And with nearly 350 fifth graders expected next September, there will be a scramble to free up Chenery teachers to meet the demand by adding Lower School classes at the beginning of the next school year.

Luckily, due to some creative changes made in the number of classes each student takes in a specific subject and other methods to reduce the need for students in a specific room, most class sizes are manageable in the Middle School and Belmont High.

The High School has also seen a big increase in students this year, 63, with a ninth and tenth grade enrollment averaging an eye-opening 314 per class as opposed to 275 in the final two grades.

Just five years ago, the graduating class of 2009 was less than 250 students.

Yet the trend of greater enrollment is not surprising as estimates made over the past year anticipated a rush of new students into the district, many coming from private schools and alternative educational approaches due to the district's stellar reputation.

"We knew where the trend was going," said Darias.

But the School Committee is not the only town groups that will be taking great interest in the latest number of kids in each classroom.

About to make its debut, the 13-member Belmont Financial Task Force – consisting of Town Administrator David Kale, Town Treasurer Floyd Carman, Kingston, reps from the school committee and others – was created by the Belmont Board of Selectmen this year to cobble together a long-term solution for the town's ever growing revenue gap and make recommendations to Town Meeting.

Highly dependent on residential property taxes and annual state aid, Belmont's budget is susceptible to reductions from Beacon Hill and without the leverage to increase revenue from real estate taxes.

With town expenditures rising at greater than 2.5 percent limit on annual property tax increases, the only solution for town budget writers has been to institute cuts to departments and programs.

Kingston has made a point since the beginning of his tenure in Belmont two-and-a-half years ago to raise concerns that unless educational expectations are met, the district will likely to see a slow but persistent decline in many areas. Many of those expectations requires an adequately-funded school department budget which is hard to accomplish due to the town's structural-revenue problem, he said.

One area that has been discussed by town officials – such as Selectmen Chair Mark Paolillo – is the need for an operating override, in which the town would attempt to convince voters to support a multi-year suspension of the 2 1/2 revenue limit to allow a steady revenue stream to stabilize town budgets and replenish departments while allowing the time to create or discover new revenue sources. 

In May, after the school department's budget could only be raised by two-and-a-half percent and not the three percent recommended to keep the district "moving forward" in keeping pace with educational expectations, "[t]he town needs to prepare for an override," warned Kingston.

But as town officials have also admitted, any override could only be successful (Belmont voters have not approved an override in nearly 13 years) if the facts justified the expenditure.

And one area would likely be evidence of long-term student trends requiring an increase in teaching staff in the Belmont district.

"This is information that will make its way to the Task Force," said Kingston.

After the meeting, Darias said the issue of overcrowding in the elementary and middle school is not a lack of classroom space.

"This is about staffing levels. We just need teachers to put in those rooms," she said.