Lee School Committee approves FY ’14 budget

LEE – The school committee unanimously approved the fiscal year 2014 budget of $8,705,175, an increase of 3.25 percent ($256,004) over FY ’13.

From that total, the Town of Lee is expected to contribute $8,144,175 and will vote on doing so at town meeting.

“We are grateful to the Town of Lee for supporting our children and our schools,” Lee Public Schools Superintendent Jason P. McCandless said during a public hearing on the budget on Tuesday night (April 9).

The largest increase in the budget is an additional number around $280,000 for faculty and staff salaries. From that total, $150,000 accounts for a 1.5 percent cost-of-livng increase for all staff members, with the additional $130,000 covering staff members with increased experience and educational steps and columns.

“Day in and day out, it’s teachers that are doing the work with students,” said Dr. McCandless, who, at various points during his presentation, indicated the budget revolved around student needs.

Other (smaller) increases include additional instructional materials and textbooks for Advanced Placement (AP) classes at Lee Middle and High School ($20,000), foreign language classes ($7,500), math classes ($12,000) and other Common Core subject areas (English, science and social studies; $16,000).

To offset some of the increases, reductions were made as well, including in operations and maintenance, the elimination of one school bus (going from five to four) and eliminating an administrative-level curriculum position.

Some concern was raised about eliminating the curriculum coordinator position, which was just added this year, but Dr. McCandless – who did have his own reservations about it – assured the community it was necessary to balance out the budget.

“We just don’t seem to be able to facilitate a second year out of it,” he said.

Posted by Catherine M. Krummey on April 11, 2013. Filed under Education News,News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry