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Leicester schools seek more cash... |
With its special education budget dramatically in the red, the School Committee Thursday night voted to request an article on the warrant for the year-end special town meeting in May to recoup the deficit funds.
Special Education Director Maureen Ferguson told the committee the budget for special education tuition fees already is more than $233,000 in deficit and the special education transportation budget is more than $153,000 in the red with the four months still to go in the school year.
Mrs. Ferguson said that the Leicester system doesn't have the services that some of these students require, so they must be tuitioned out — at Leicester's expense.
Mrs. Ferguson said the deficit in the special education transportation budget is due to the cost of transporting special education students being greater than the cost of transporting other students. If students have physical handicaps and are in wheelchairs, they have to be transported in special vans that can accommodate wheelchairs, and those are more expensive. Many of the students have to be accompanied by aides, also at town expense.
“It is reaching the point where it costs us nearly as much to transport 37 special education students as to bus the entire rest of our student population,” she said.
Mrs. Ferguson said the school department is going to apply for an extraordinary relief reimbursement program the Department of Education is expected to offer this year to communities whose special education busing costs were 125 percent or more greater than the previous year, which Leicester has exceeded. She said the department also will seek additional reimbursement under the so-called “circuit breaker” program, which provides money for special education costs that exceed a certain level.
Superintendent Michael N. Dubrule said that in an effort to get through the current budget year, the entire school budget has been frozen since December, which means money can't be spent to replenish supplies and equipment. But he warned that this situation cannot go on forever or the system would be in jeopardy of falling below the state minimum school spending requirement.
He also noted that in comparison with seven other area school districts of similar size, Leicester was sixth lowest in per-pupil expenditure.
The superintendent said the budget also has suffered from the fact that fees instituted for student parking at the high school this year are not going to the schools but to the general budget.
The committee voted to try to correct that problem by asking the May annual town meeting to set up a parking revolving account. Although committee members have not yet decided whether to charge fees for busing next year, they are asking to have a busing revolving account set up to handle them, just in case.
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