Schools
Burlington School Committee Member Offers Clarification On Budget
In a letter to the editor, Martha Simon tries to clarify confusion over a proposed raise for Burlington Superintendent Eric Conti.
BURLINGTON, MA — The following letter to the editor was submitted by Burlington School Committee member Martha Simon. Patch regularly publishes letters to the editor on a wide range of topics relevant to Burlington residents. To have your letter considered for publication, please send it to dave.copeland@patch.com.
To the Editor:
The article and the headline from April 11th about the salary of the superintendent of Burlington Public Schools includes inaccurate information. The FY2020 budget is the second year of a new format for the school budget. For this budget, our Business Manager, Nichole Coscia, found some items that are more appropriate in a different line item.
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In the interest of budgetary transparency, the superintendent’s salary line item was changed. In the FY2019 budget, the superintendent’s salary line item did not include all of his compensation. In the FY2020 budget, Ms. Coscia included all of his compensation, including an annuity, in the superintendent salary line item. Therefore, the percentage change in that line item is quite large, but the superintendent’s raise is budgeted at only 2%, the same as for Burlington teachers.
The assistant superintendent’s salary line item was handled in the same way with numbers from other line items being placed into the salary line for FY2020. The increase in the salary of the director of nursing is due to her being promoted to a director position, which includes a stipend.
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The proposed FY2020 Burlington Public Schools budget will be voted on at May Town Meeting. We want Town Meeting members and the public to have accurate information about the school budget.
A summary of the budget, the full budget, and the reductions that the School Committee voted to keep our budget within guidelines are available on the school system's Website. These documents are also available in paper copy at the Clerk’s Office, the Burlington Public Library, and the Council on Aging.
Martha Simon, Chair
Burlington School Committee
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