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Schools

Elementary District 2012 Recommended Budget Ready for Town's Review

Some marked increases for the coming school year, as outside funding has decreased.

The Wrentham Elementary School Committee met Tuesday night to go over Superintendent Jeffrey Marsden’s recommended budget for the 2012 fiscal year.

 The recommended budget will be discussed again in March with the Finance Committee, and then will be approved at a public hearing. The chief concern this year will be the fact that the facilities revolving account will no longer have enough funds to cover custodial costs.

This means that the recommended budget will have a significant increase this year, as the costs of paying Wrentham public schools’ custodial staff will have to be paid through the regular budget. Also, the district will lose about $185,000 this year, as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will end its grant program with Wrentham.

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Marsden said that because of this and the gradual increase in staffing and staff hours, and other necessary increases, the total recommended operating budget would have a projected increase of $897,049, or 10.3% since last year. He added that the Wrentham School District has been losing staff and staff hours in recent years, mainly due to the economy. In the past two years, there have been no approved increases in the Wrentham Public Schools' budget.

Over 30 full-time equivalent positions were cut in the past three years to keep the budget in the black, and Marsden and the school committee agreed that they want to start gradually phasing those positions back.

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Marsden admits that in his five-year tenure as the district superintendent, he has never had a recommended budget with that much of an increase, but asserts that such a drastic increase in spending is nevertheless necessary.

“I think it’s my responsibility to the kids, to the teachers and to the  townspeople to let them know what we’ve had to endure the last few years,” he said. “And to give a sense of restoration to what we had a few years ago, and what we need this year to do that. We can’t sustain this excellence by continually picking apart the district.”

He added that, looking at all the four districts for which Wrentham citizens pay through taxes (Wrentham public schools, Norfolk Agricultural High School, King Philip Regional High School and the Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical High School), the Wrentham public school system has cut the most money out of its respective budget than the other three institutions.

Marsden said this is definitely a dramatic increase, but when compared to surrounding towns, Wrentham public schools have been putting less into the system and getting the more out of it in the past three years. He showed a chart, put together from information gathered by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, which showed Wrentham spending on average $1,500 to $2,000 less per year per pupil than both Norfolk and Plainville. Marsden told the committee his ideas for the district if Wrentham received as much money per pupil as surrounding towns.

“We would have an appropriate classroom student-teacher ratio, more like 19 to 22 kids per classroom,” he said. “Not 23-25 like we have now. We would have special education teachers with caseloads that are closer to 17 kids, not 30, as we have now. Our kids would have things like art, music, health, enrichment, all year. We would have computers that are three to four years old, not seven, eight or nine years old. These are the kinds of things our kids deserve, and these would be the priorities to restore.”

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