No Easy Way to Cut the School Budget, Watertown Officials Find

Saving serious dollars in the Watertown schools will be difficult and messy, officials said this week, with ideas such as closing a school or shutting down programs as painful alternatives to balance the budget.

Other areas examined during the for potential cost savings include changing the format of the middle school, limiting school busing, and reducing the budget for  high school and middle school sports.

School officials would need to get $2 million more in fiscal 2012, than this year’s budget – $38.4 million – to maintain a “level service” budget – which includes the same staff and programs, said Allie Altman, the district’s director of business services.

One idea discussed by the subcommittee is reorganizing elementary schools so all students in a particular grade are at the same school.

The clustering of grades in itself will not save a lot of money in itself, said Superintendent Ann Koufman. The savings would come from closing a school.

The two remaining elementary schools would not have enough room to hold all the children, Koufman said, so the schools would look different.

“Fifth grade could go to the middle school and the eighth grade would move to the high school,” Koufman said. "It is the only place we have the space.”

Reorganizing the middle school from its current cluster structure into something more like a high school schedule is another possibility, Koufman said. The school could eliminate six teaching positions, she said, but it would not be the best thing for students.

“Clustering is the most educationally sound (program) at the middle school,” Koufman said.

Another area of potential savings is limiting the number of students who ride school buses. The district allows students living 1.5 miles from their school to ride the bus. If they moved the limit to 2 miles, the distance the state requires districts to provide bus service, would mean the number of students riding the bus would drop dramatically.

More than 300 ride school buses now, but only 21 students live farther than 2 miles from school, Altman said. This would require on bus, rather than three they district uses now.

If the district closes a school, however, the savings may be lost, because more children would live more than 2 miles from school, Koufman said.

Cutting the budget for high school and middle school sports was discussed.

At the high school, that could mean cutting teams, such as the freshman teams, or reducing the number of sports teams fielded by WHS, Koufman.

School Committee Chairman Anthony Paolillo said he does not think Watertown can save a lot of money from cuts in the athletics programs because it does not have a large staff. Coaches are part time.

“The problem with sports is you are talking about such small numbers of people effected,” Paolillo said.

Another cost for athletics is transportation, but Paolillo said if the number of away games is limited it could result in Watertown being kicked out of the 10-member Middlesex League.

At the middle school, the whole program costs about $60,000 Altman said.

Koufman will provide more details on Monday, March 21, when she gives her budget message. She will discuss the budget at a public meeting in the Watertown High School lecture hall.