Burlington Superintendent Says Overspending Won't Happen Again

BURLINGTON, MA -- Superintendent Eric Conti offered an apology and explanation for the Burlington Public Schools overspending of its 2017-18 budget, and assurances the problem would not happen again. Conti blamed the overspending -- now believed to be about $780,000 -- on a variety of factors when he gave an update to the Burlington School Committee Tuesday night.

"I think there's a lot of misinformation out there about the situation and I think I'm the cause of most of that. I should have waited to answer until I had more details" before reporting the district had a $1.7 million deficit for the year ended June 30, Conti said. "I want to explicitly apologize to residents of Burlington. We did overspend...and I'm responsible for that."

Conti said the overspending was a result of under-budgeting for salaries. A contract year, "very expensive legal settlements," planned-for retirements and vacations, and more spending on substitute teachers all combined to create the blown budget, Conti said. Conti did not offer specifics on the legal settlements; to date, the only settlement the district has publicly disclosed is the severance paid to Louise D'Amato, who resigned as Burlington's special education director

"We have some of these unpredictable things happen periodically," Conti said. "There's no single event that caused this but a bunch of different things happened, and they seemed to all happen at once."

The $1.7 million Conti reported to the committee at its last meeting was a "worst case scenario." Between releasing that number and Tuesday night's meeting, the district went through invoices and purchase orders and brought the number down to about $780,000.

"The practice and the culture in the past was not to account for [changes in the budget] in real time, but to wait until the end of the year. As long as you have enough money, that's fine, but as the budgets have gotten tighter" that's become a problem, Conti.

Burlington Town Meeting will have to figure out how to pay for the deficit next month. Several town meetings are also calling for a full audit of the school's finances.

At its September 11 meeting, the school committee will be asked to vote to turn over $235,000 back to the town from its capital projects budget to cover the deficit. The committee also will also vote on whether or not to delay work on several projects, including upgrades to the high school parking lot, the Francis Wyman Elementary air conditioning system and installing a rubber surface at the Pine Glen Elementary playground. That move would return another $269,000, for a total of $504,000. Conti said the school district would wait until the end of the year to find the rest of the money to repay the town's stabilization fund.

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