Burlington School Department Goes $1.7 Million Over Budget

BURLINGTON, MA -- Burlington Public Schools overspent its budget by $1.7 million, or about 3.3%, in 2017-18. The school department will ask Town Meeting for the funding to make up the deficit. About $600,000 was for special education transportation costs, while another $200,000 came for a stipend for tutoring. The district also went $220,000 over its budget for substitute teachers and incurred higher-than-expected maintenance expenses.

Superintendent Eric Conti disclosed the overspending at Tuesday night's school committee meeting. Conti attributed the problem to rising special education transportation costs, which in previous years had been covered from operating funds. But over time the deficit has built up and that option is no longer feasible.

"No one likes to go to town meeting to ask for money," Conti said. "This is a problem, I don't want to say it is not, but I do think it's occurred because of significantly increasing costs in special education we've been trying to cover a bunch of ways, and I think it's just caught up with us over time."

Conti also said the district had 35 maternity and paternity leaves this year, up from the usual number in the low 20s. He said the stipends are generally paid out in the last payroll period of the fiscal year by way of explaining why the disclosure of the over-spending coming after the fiscal year closed.

School Committee members Thomas Murphy and Stephen Nelson suggested Conti work on developing periodic reports so the school committee could get alerts earlier when the district was likely to go over budget. "Going forward we need to keep a better hold on a month-to-month basis...so we can avoid scrambling around like we're doing here," Murphy said.

The revelation comes after a year in which the school department was scrutinized for financial mismanagement and less than a month after the school committee gave Conti glowing reviews in his annual performance evaluations.

"I think he's the best superintendent we have ever had and I look forward to continuing to work with him," school committee member Christine Monaco said at the board's June 26 meeting. At the same meeting, school committee member Nelson said members are told not to give ratings of exemplary but that he felts Conti was as close to as exemplary as the district could hope for.

At Tuesday night's meeting, however, Monaco suggested the committee had been blindsided by the overspending.

"I've been on the school committee for a number of years and this is the first time something like this has come before me, so I was surprised," Monaco said.

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Patch file photo.

Dave Copeland can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).