School Committee Votes to Remove Busing Fee

Lynnfield parents will apparently not have to pay for busing fees for next year after school committee members voted to remove the busing fee approved at their April 5 meeting.  The proposal passed 4-0, with one member, Michael Craffey abstaining since he had previously voted to not institute a busing fee. 

The committee also approved a proposal to ask the Board of Selectmen to add an additional $250,000 to a Proposition 2 ½ override ballot question.    

In other action during Monday night’s meeting, Superintendent Robert Hassett spoke candidly about potential worst-case budget scenarios if there is a $1.2 to $1.3 million budget cut for the school department in FY12.

“I’ll be distributing sometime in the next week 43 letters of non-renewal or lay-off of teachers. Some of those teachers will be non professional status people and some will be professional status people,” Hassett said.

A minimum of 27 teachers would be laid off if the school department’s budget is not approved. 

Hassett explained that the teachers’ contract stipulates that they have to be informed by May 15 about their employment status for the following school year.

Hassett and his leadership team have considered several money saving options.  The team has looked at the possibility of eliminating kindergarten teaching aides, eliminating foreign languages and computer technology at the middle school and eliminating the department’s reading resource coordinator.

The Superintendent mentioned other scenarios including: full pay to play for student activities fees, decreasing art and music at the high school, decreasing the number of media specialists from four to two, and decreasing physical education classes at the middle school and elementary schools.   

“All of these are not necessarily going to come to fruition, but these are the types of things that we are currently looking at with that sort of deficit,” Hassett stated.

School Committee Chair Dorothy Presser recommended that the committee and school administrators have a discussion at the next committee meeting regarding expectations for the upcoming school year.

“We need to have a good discussion about what the district will look like and make some programmatic decisions,” Presser added.

The committee also unanimously approved changes to student handbooks at all grade levels for the 2011-2012 school year.

The next School Committee meeting will be held on May 10 at the High School Media Center at 7 p.m.