Town administrators and the Rochester School Committee have finally agreed on a number for the Rochester Memorial School fiscal year 2017 budget, which was approved on April 7 after a short presentation of the FY17 budget.
The budget is up roughly $140,000 from last year to about $5.8 million, a 2.4 percent increase.
“We’ve been able to sustain the majority of the positions or make switches within the program to move people where they will be more effective and serve more kids,” said Superintendent Doug White. “I think there’s been some good adjustments to this over the previous year and it makes us stronger, but there hasn’t been a lot of reduction…”
Driving the budget up were staff contractual obligations and an increased need for educational equipment; however, a few decreases in needs, such as a reduction in utility costs, a decrease in transportation costs, and special education services, kept the budget from climbing too high.
In other matters, the School Committee voted to opt-out of the school choice program for the next school year.
“I believe under our current structure and how our class sizes are set up, unfortunately … I would recommend that we don’t participate in school choice moving forward for this current school year … and making sure that we sustain and maintain the education for the students of Rochester,” said White.
School Committee members were quick to concur with White before a unanimous vote. School Committee member Jennifer Kulak said she was already supportive of foregoing school choice for next year and others agreed.
“The same goes for me,” said School Committee member Robin Rounseville. “I went and looked at class sizes, and we are not in a good place (to continue school choice).”
The next meeting of the Rochester School Committee is scheduled for May 5 at 6:30 pm at the Rochester Town Hall.
By Jean Perry