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Finance board OKs LHK budget


 


 

FALLS VILLAGE — After a round of substantial cuts in the Lee Kellogg School’s proposed 2007-08 budget, the Board of Finance now appears satisfied with the Board of Education’s spending plan.

At its regular meeting Monday night, April 14, the finance board put few questions to school board Chairman Andrea Downs and Principal Maria Bulson. That may be because the proposed increase had been substantialy reduced, from 5 percent to 2.2 percent.

The original budget plan had included a proposal to hire an additional one-year teacher to address a problem with one of the school’s multi-age groupings.

The finance board declined to endorse that plan at a meeting last month. The school board responded by reaching a compromise, opting instead to increase a veteran teacher’s status from half time to 4/5 (or .8, as it is described in school contracts). That will cost $21,253.

Because of a previous reduction in the school’s math support program, the total full-time faculty equivalents will actually stay the same, though, according to school officials.

Coupled with various other line-item cuts in computers, equipment and supplies, the revised spending plan for the school now stands at $1.75 million, or an increase of 2.2 percent over this year.

The plan calls for veteran social studies teacher Amy Lake to obtain temporary certification to teach reading and writing to seventh- and eighth-graders. That way, other teachers can be freed up to alleviate a problem with the grade three and four classroom caused by too many "pull-out" classes — or subjects for which the students must be sent out of their homerooms to be taught subjects such as math and reading by another teacher elsewhere in the building.

The finance board has now scheduled a public hearing on the town and education budgets for April 25 at 7 p.m. The board will then meet April 28 at 6:30 p.m. to recommend the spending package go to a town meeting, which will likely take place the week of May 12, finance board Chairman Chuck Lemmen said.

Lakeville Journal

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