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