Your Voices Were Heard!

To Everyone Who Contributed To This Blog

Thanks for you support and contributions. I hope you found this blog to be a useful tool for public dialogue. The City budget was ammended last night after a compromise was proposed by the Mayor’s Office and Councillors Coughlin and Gutro rescinded their original votes. What once was a 3 million dollar cut to the School budget is now a 1.5 million dollar cut. I wish it was more, but I think we can take great pride in knowing our voices were heard.

It appears the financial future of our city is uncertain at best. If you have suggestions for finding real solutions to our City’s financial challenges I will post them. This forum has proven to be an effective advocate for our schools and maybe… by putting our heads together, we can provide real cost saving solutions and revenue sources that elected officials haven’t considered. That being said, this blog will only entertain thoughtful solutions and comments.

I look forward to our ongoing conversation!

Thanks, Kevin Mahoney

Some Numbers to Consider

Dear Quincy Residents,

Mayor Tom Koch creates the city budget including giving the School Committee the bottom line for their budget. For next school year the Mayor’s budget included $82,733,562 for the schools. This allowed for a level service budget that included increased costs for mandated programs such as Special Education and English Limited Learners, adding a small amount of teachers to keep class size within guidelines, $3.136 million to cover negotiated raises for teachers and other personnel as well as providing for increase of costs of gasoline, utilities, textbooks and educational supplies.  Last week the City Council made $5 million in cuts to the Mayor’s Budget. This included a cut to the school department of $2,925 million which is 60% of the overall cuts the City Council made. The City Council can only cut or accept the Mayor’s budget. In my 28 years of involvement with education in our city I have never seen the City Council make a cut like the one we are facing today. The City of Quincy received for this present school year $14,388,553 in Chapter 70 money from the state, Chapter 70 funds is earmarked for education. But the funds are not received by the schools they go into the city general fund. For FY09 which is next year’s budget the City of Quincy will receive an increase of $1,738,114 in Chapter 70 money. With the budget cut of $2.925 million to the schools’ the bottom line for next year’s school budget is less than the increased aid. We will be buying less and spending more money since all costs have risen from textbooks, paper, learning supplies and so on. The School Committee and Superintendent’s team is working to make cuts as far away from the classroom as possible. But the School Committee’s options of what can be cut will be painful if the $3 million Council cut stays. We need to work together and be as creative as possible. We hope and are working to ask the City Council to reconsider their vote. Thank you for your efforts to make education important to the families of Quincy.

Respectfully,

Jo-Ann M. Bragg
Quincy School Committee

Hello Concerned Quincy Citizen

Dear City Resident,

On Thursday, May 15th, City Councillors Finn, Raymondi, Keenan, Coughlin and Gutro voted to cut 3 Million dollars from our school’s budget. This could result in the layoffs of teachers, larger classroom sizes and a reduction of programs, including Kindergarten, Sports and the Arts.

We urge you to call and email your Councillors, using the contact information on this blog telling them to reconsider their vote on cutting the School Budget by such a devastating amount.

Together we will make a difference!

Over the next few days we will be forming teams for Flyer Drops in certain neighborhoods and events. Please let us know if you can help.