KP School Committee Approves Amended Budget

The King Philip School Committee voted at its meeting Monday night to approve an amended budget which includes the reduction of several positions at the high school.

District Superintendent Elizabeth Zielinksi said the administration's goal was a level-funded budget, though she added the current budget is a bit short of that.

Zielinski said the new budget took updated numbers — like more specific health care, retirement program and circuit breaker figures — into account.

"Some of the numbers are still in flux," she said. "For the most part, we have cut down."

According to Zielinski, the new budget would eliminate about 6.4 positions at the high school. She said three of those positions would be through attrition — not hiring replacements for staff members who had retired.

Committee member Matthew Gray said the staffing levels for the building are getting low.

"I have some concern about how low they would be if we filled the entire gap [to a level-funded budget]," he said.

Committee member Patrick Francomano said the prospects for next year's budget are not bright.

"It would behoove us to recognize that this is probably the last year we'll be in a position to do anything close to this with excess and deficiency [funds]," he said. "Because we've relied on that for the last two or three years, next year is going to be very, very challenging."

Other committee members agreed, noting that the district was receiving about $1 million in non-renewable revenue, like $450,000 from the federal education jobs bill.