FY15 Amesbury Public School Budget

The City Council's Finance Committee is half-way through our hearings on the FY15 City Budget.  The Finance Committee makes initial recommendations for all departments, including Amesbury Public Schools, on Thursday, June 5th.  The City Council takes its final votes on all department budgets and line items on Tuesday, June 17th.

I want to talk about the proposed FY15 Public Schools budget and lay out my thoughts on it.  At the start, let me state that I share the concerns of many parents and other residents that the FY15 Schools budget, as it currently stands, includes reductions that will:

• limit the ability of graduates to enter most colleges and universities, through the reduction of foreign language offerings to 2 years only (most require 3 or 4 years);
• eliminate the option for high school students to earn college credit through the Early College program at Northern Essex Community College;
• eliminate technical education classes at the middle school and high school; and
• eliminate consumer science education classes at the middle school.

I am also concerned that the loss of teaching staff at the middle school will:

• increase the number of study hall blocks;
• strain our capacity to meet the Commonwealth's 'Time On Learning' requirements, requiring us to upgrade 'Curriculum Enrichment Blocks' to creditable time, to substitute for the loss of actual class time with a full curriculum; and 
• require our already strained administrators to spend more time monitoring study halls and cafeteria blocks, rather than performing their duties as administrators.

 Bigger picture impacts:

• potential increase in 'choice out' students as school quality declines, which would be a net loss; and
• potential decrease in house values (and related rise in property tax rate), as school quality has been shown to be a primary determinant for home buyers (investment in schools tracks increases in home values).

Per information from school administrators distributed at the April 1, 2014 School Committee meeting, the value of these eliminated positions + Early College program is $330,542.

The options for restoring these positions at this point in the budget process are very limited.

• At the present, the City Council has no authority to increase the school budget (under MA law); we can only accept it as proposed or reduce it.  
• There was slight hope that the State Senate might increase the amount of local school aid (aka Chapter 70) in the Commonwealth's own FY15 budget, but the Senate passed a budget last Friday that kept the Chapter 70 revenue estimate that we already had baked into our budget cake.
• The City Council could debate and vote on a higher amount for the Schools IF the School Committee takes a new vote and approves a higher amount before our final June 17 vote.
• The Mayor could bring one or more 'supplemental' budget requests to the Council outside of the normal budget process for our debate and approval.

Following Mayor Gray's submission of his total budget request to the City Council on May 12 (2 weeks ago), response from residents concerned about these reductions and their impact has focused on requesting the School Committee to take a new vote and make a new recommendation, thus enabling the City Council to debate and vote on it.

In fact, in just the last 10 days, a petition with this request was drafted, organizing house parties were held around town, 40 'petition captains' volunteered to gather signatures, and over 100 'I Support Amesbury Schools' signs were distributed around Amesbury.  As of tonight, over 800 signatures have been gathered, with a goal of 1,000 by next week, for submission to the School Committee.

I wholeheartedly support this effort and have been happy to lend my time and energy to it.

Let me be clear about a few things.  I think that Mayor Gray did his job as Mayor in looking at Amesbury's total financial picture and giving the School Committee and school administration a set number to develop a budget within.  Then the School Committee (with Mayor Gray as Chair) did its job in developing and approving a budget within that parameter.  And, with the budget submitted on May 12 to the City Council, it is now the Council and the public's turn to 'do its job', which is responding to the budget and advocating regarding it.  In that spirit, I join lots of residents and parents in saying, 'We can do more.'  I'm hopeful that we'll find a way to make this work and avoid these impacts.

Also, asking for these positions to be kept in the budget is not asking for a 'level services' budget.  That would mean keeping a facilities coordinator (to manage our building assets at 4 sites), a transportation coordinator (to manage transportation services across the system), and a central office assistant (to, among other things, more than pay for itself by handling Medicaid and other insurance billing to help cover SPED costs).  Instead, all of those responsibilities now fall on the Superintendent and Assistant Superintendent directly (in addition to their many other responsibilities).

I believe that Amesbury has the ability to cover these needs (it will cost about $52 to the average single family house owner) and I think that it is reasonable to let the City Council debate and vote on this budget amendment.  But this will only happen if the School Committee takes a new vote.  If you have not already, please consider signing a petition.  Write to the School Committee, the Mayor and the City Council about this.  Come to the next School Committee meeting on Monday, June 2 at the High School.  

One last note: the Senate Budget passed last week DID include an amendment by our State Senator Katie O'Connor-Ives directing money to Northern Essex Community College, funding an area-wide Early College Program for local high school students.  It stands a good chance of surviving the 'conference committee' process with the House and becoming a part of the Commonwealth's FY15 budget.  This is great news and would resolve one of the areas of concern.

Lower Millyard Development -- May 2014 Update

I get a lot of questions about the Lower Millyard project, so here is another progress report.  I'm on the LMY Task force and we had our monthly meeting this morning.  Here are some updates on the project.  Items are listed more or less in the order that they will be rolling out over the next year +.

• Brownfield Cleanup: This is for the land between the existing and soon-to-be vacated DPW buildings and river.  The official 'ground breaking' for this was held earlier this week and the portion of the Riverwalk on Water Street has already been blocked off.  Digging will start next week and should be done in June, in '4 - 6 weeks.'  With the long winter, start on this initial piece of the big puzzle has been delayed.  I was unable to attend this but I was pleased to see that both our current and former Mayors were there for this.  A project like this (20 + years in the making) transcends changes in administrations and requires a long view from lots of folks in order to ever get done.  It took a lot of effort from Mayor Kezer to get us to this point and it will take a lot of effort from Mayor Gray to see this through.

• Heritage Park Construction: This will begin after the clean-up is complete.  With the late start to the clean-up, this also will have a late start (in June).  This is especially important since the bulk of the State resources paying for the park are supposed to be expended by the end of June.  However, Mayor Gray has worked with the relevant state agency and this should not be a problem.  What is more of a problem is that (not unlike the Fire HQ rehab), the winning bid came in well over the allocated amount (allocated = $548k for construction; winning  bid = $738k).  What does that mean?  It means that, as with the Fire Dept. HQ rehab, the scope of the project will have to be scaled back substantially, given the almost $200k difference.  Unfortunately, this means that the planned water feature will likely not be included in the final design.  The City is working to shift costs where possible out of construction and on to other aspects of the overall LMY redevelopment, in an effort to preserve the water feature. 

•  Demolition of DPW Building:What we are talking about here is the demo of the building immediately in front of you in this view of the LMY (the two-storey building behind it will be preserved as the new location of the Carriage Museum).  This is currently out to bid but that
  
  process will be completed shortly.  The DPW is on deadline to remove all equipment from there and the building should be down completely by the end of June.  These first three elements will bring substantial and rapid change to the 'look' of the Lower Millyard area.

• Water Street Re-Alignment: This is also currently out to bid.  This will start this construction season but will continue into next year.  This involves moderating the curve of Water Street, directing it through what is now the DPW building that you see in this picture.  This will bring new curbing and new sidewalks, as well.

• Riverwalk Extension + Boat Launch: These elements are still in design review and negotiation with the Department of Transportation (primary funder).  At best, this work will begin this year and extend in to FY2016.  Don't go buying a new kayak just yet.  The Riverwalk extension will:
• add a new bridge across the Back River, avoiding the current re-direction that the Walk takes across the existing Water Street bridge over the Back River, connecting the Walk in a direct line into the new Heritage Park
• extend the Riverwalk across the Powow River to Mill Street (and into the 'valley' area below downtown) and then bring it up Mill Street to Main Street, where it can connect with the Upper Millyard walk
• create a small craft boat launch in Heritage Park for canoes and kayaks
• shore up the banks of both the Powow and Back Rivers where they meet by Heritage Park

For more information on the project:

• HERE is a link to a Mass. Development overview of the LMY project. 

• HERE is a link to a great set of graphics that visually indicates the where & what of this project, using photos of current conditions.