By JEFF EPSTEIN
[email protected]
WINDSOR, Vt. — The Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union (WSESU) board is considering a preliminary budget for the 2019-2020 year of $4.9 million, an increase of more than $841,000 over the current year. Although this early draft budget does not yet include anticipated reimbursements from the state and modifications in district discretionary spending, SU administrators said that the final budget that goes before a town meeting in the spring will also likely include increased assessments.
The motion to pass the draft budget, not voted on at press time, included a provision that “We reserve the right to look at discretionary spending in December.”
The financial sheets presented to the board at its Monday meeting included rough guesses of some items, including costs for labor that are under negotiation. The preliminary budget was broken into four categories: technology, central office, special education and early childhood. Of those, the largest category and the largest increase was in special education.
The special education draft budget was $2.7 million, an increase of 25.76 percent over the current year, about $554,000. Each of the three member school districts, Weathersfield, Mount Ascutney, and Hartland would have an increase.
Superintendent David Baker urged the board to remember that costs for special education students and their individual education plans (IEP) have escalated in recent years. “Our IEP count has been up in the last few years,” he said.
The costs include a variety of state-mandated services such as instructional assistants, psychologists, speech therapists and transportation. When a student who is assessed with meeting the requirements for special education moves into a school district, the IEP for that student then become part of the district’s overall special education budget. Often, those services need to be procured from outside vendors. In the case of WSESU, said Baker, some services are available internally, such as an in-house psychologist, but the SU still needs to look outside in some cases.
“This is happening across the state,” he said.
Administrative staff repeatedly stated during the meeting the numbers were not final, with some revenue and expenses not known at this time. But “the bottom line does fall on the taxpayer,” Baker acknowledged. “I know when it comes to the SU budget, I’m going to have to stand up before the public.”
Baker also cautioned that there was a limit on how much IEP expenses can be broken out, because of the concern over revealing the identity of individual families using the services.
Another category, technology, would receive a 39 percent increase. However, this would be the first year of a program to consolidate technology costs at the SU level, removing them from individual school district budgets. The increase of more than $200,000 needs to be taken in context, Baker said.
Central office would get a 10 percent increase, and the budget for early childhood services would actually decrease, about two percent.
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