Budget buy-in just first step for school.

Byline: Steven H. Foskett Jr.

SUTTON - The school budget passed at town meeting without a single question being raised May 12, and at the same forum, voters approved borrowing around $700,000 for a feasibility study that could lead to a new or renovated and expanded middle and high school.

Despite the relatively smooth sailing the School Department enjoyed, it is still saddled with a budget deficit, and the skyrocketing price of oil has only made the situation worse.

The School Committee mulled over its options this week, and is expected to vote on cuts at its June 2 meeting, Superintendent Cecilia M. DiBella said yesterday.

Although town meeting approved a school budget of around $13 million, as part of the $26 million overall town budget, the School Committee has known since winter that it would be dealing with a deficit. Ms. DiBella said the committee had been working with a deficit of around $900,000, but after the bid for the district's heating oil for the next school year came in wildly higher than anticipated, that deficit grew to more than $1 million.

Ms. DiBella said yesterday that the district buys heating oil through the French River Collaborative, a pool of school districts that act

together to increase buying power. The district is currently locked in at $2.19 per gallon, and the district administration anticipated an increase of around $87,000 for the new bid for the fiscal 2009 budget. But she said the best price the French River Collaborative could get was $3.79. That would translate into another $162,000 - on top of the $87,000 budgeted increase.

Ms. DiBella said the collaborative rejected that bid and decided to go out to bid again, to see if it could fetch a better price. She said she is looking at other options, including buying oil over the open market (hoping that the current state of oil prices represents a worst-case scenario), or budgeting for only a portion of the year and revisiting the issue later in the year, when prices could be lower.

In the meantime, the oil increases - coupled with the existing deficit - are forcing the committee to look for savings in the fiscal 2009 budget.

At its Monday night meeting, the School Committee heard from faculty and staff about where savings could be realized and what programs should be saved. The board discussed, at length, the possibility of restructuring the middle school team-teaching approach, to use fewer teachers to teach more students. The move would save two positions and would not involve layoffs because one position is a vacancy due to a resignation and the other is a vacancy because of a teacher moving to a different position in the district. It would increase class sizes and teacher workload.

The committee also discussed the pros and cons of rethinking some of the technology related changes budgeted for fiscal 2009, and discussed eliminating foreign language instruction from early learning and elementary grades.

Committee members stressed at the meeting that they were not making any final decisions and were simply trying to get more data to help them make an informed decision.

Ms. DiBella said yesterday that some of the oil cost increases can be offset. For example, she said, the district could save around $44,000 by purchasing another van for special education transportation; she also said increased preschool tuition and building use fees will help. Still, Ms. DiBella said, the cuts will have an effect on programs and she hopes to avoid layoffs. She said that school districts are not unlike regular citizens in dealing with the economic fallout of record-high gas prices.

"It has really thrown the process into a spin," Ms. DiBella said.