MELROSE — The School Committee Tuesday passed a $28 million spending plan for the year beginning July 1, less than a week before Mayor Robert J. Dolan appeared poised to ask for an override of Proposition 2 1/2.
The city’s rumor mill was churning on overdrive over the past week amid speculation that Dolan planned to ask taxpayers for more money to meet the city’s growing educational needs. He begins his pitch with a budget presentation to school officials and the aldermen Monday night.
The package approved by the school board includes $24,819,000 in salaries for the 507.6 full time equivalent employees in the system. Contracted services are estimated at $2.7 million, total supplies and materials are tabbed at $527,912 and $71,479 in equipment and technology. The fiscal year 2016 budget approved this week is nearly $960,000 more than this year’s allocation.
This comes in addition to the $5.5 million plan to upgrade parts of Melrose High.
One School Committee member expressed outrage at the entire educational budgeting process. In an email, Carrie Kourkoumelis wrote, “In a time when this school administration is asking the public to fund multi-million-dollar bonds in addition to the override it is about to request, one might have thought that the superintendent and School Committee would have embarked on a campaign to maximize all avenues of public access and awareness of our finances. It should have been a natural expectation that for each requested expenditure there would have been a clearly illuminated path for all to understand how these would have a direct link to improved student outcomes. Instead of the most open and accessible budget picture, this year’s process is the most manipulated, the most politicized, and least transparent that I have witnessed in the past 12 years.”
In their defense, school administrators like Supt. Cyndy Taymore have maintained for months that Melrose needs to put more money into improving the system’s educational services so students are ready to navigate in an ever-competitive world.
