WESTBROOK – The Prides Corner School would be closed and the elementary school model would be reconfigured if one scenario for the 2012-2013 budget is approved.

School Superintendent Marc Gousse officially informed the Prides Corner staff Monday that their school might close. He followed that with a district-wide staff email discussing the possibility and a meeting for district employees on Tuesday afternoon.

School officials have previously hinted at the plan, and pulled no punches in describing an upcoming budget process that, while unlikely to be as dire as the scramble to close a $3.7 million budget gap in the 2011-2012 budget, will still be tough. It is estimated that closing Prides Corner would save $500,000 or more.

In a meeting Gousse hosted with the public at the Westbrook Middle School Dec. 1, and at the district staff meeting this week, he and other top leaders in the district unveiled the budget situation to the public. Like in 2011-2012, the new process will include making up for losses in state and federal funding. Gousse estimated that in next year’s budget, the gap amounts to somewhere between $2.1 million and $2.3 million.

Part of the gap, Gousse said, also comes from newly negotiated collective bargaining agreements with all the district’s unions, which call for a salary increase after no increases in the past budget cycle. The new increases, Gousse said, add up to more than $1 million.

In addition, Gousse said, the district is losing $588,000 in American Reinvestment and Revitalization Act money, which helped save 17 jobs in the current budget.

Similar cuts in state funding are also expected, Gousse said. He also said that when he asked state coordinators about federal education funding for 2012-2013, he was told the entire state is getting a total of $500,000 this time, reinforcing the idea that local efforts will have to close the gap.

“We can’t count on Washington or Augusta rescuing us,” he told the staff on Tuesday. “I don’t see that happening.”

Like the last budget cycle, Gousse said, the only way to avoid cutting anything in the district is to hand the budget gap off to taxpayers in the form of a tax increase, which, Gousse said, he will not do.

“I will not go to the city of Westbrook and ask them for a $2 million tax increase,” he said. “That’s not going to happen.”

Gousse also said he disliked the piecemeal cutting that went on in the past budget cycle, which he referred to as “death by a thousand cuts.” Alex Stone, chairman of the School Committee’s finance committee, noted that the previous budget process also made for lengthy meetings. Some of those meetings, he said, lasted until 1 a.m., with a parade of weeping parents, teachers, staff members, and even the students imploring Gousse and the committee not to cut teachers, staff members, and programs.

Stone, addressing the public at last Thursday’s meeting at the middle school, called that process “the worst ordeal I’ve ever had to go through.” This time around, he said, the district began work on the process during the summer, rather than waiting until March, and the advance notice, plus the smaller gap compared to the last budget, will, it is hoped, prevent a repeat of those emotional, late-night gatherings.

“If we’re there in five months (or) four months from now, honestly, I think we’ve failed,” he said.

The scenarios

One benefit of advance notice, school officials have said, is there is more time to take an organized approach to the necessary budget cuts. To that end, Gousse has presented a list of three “scenarios,” which are three possible strategies for balancing the budget. Gousse has stressed that the scenarios are not set in stone, and no one solution is perfect, but they are a starting point he hopes to use with the administration, the School Committee and the public to come up with the best way to handle the budget gap.

Scenario A, he said, involves building the new budget around the idea of absorbing the entire gap within the district, meaning there would be no tax increase. Gousse has already said this is the least palatable of the three scenarios, as he envisions it leading to the “death by a thousand cuts” concept and declaring one program or person in the district more important than another, a process he called “cherry-picking.” In short, he said, Scenario A will be a repeat of the last budget process.

Scenario B, he said, involves closing Prides Corner School and reconfiguring the educational model to turn all three remaining elementary schools – Saccarappa, Canal, and Congin – into K-4 schools for children throughout the city, including those who would have gone to Prides Corner. The scenario would also send grades 5-8 to the middle school. Some members of the faculty and staff of Prides Corner would be moved, along with all the school’s pupils, to other schools in the district, he said, but some employees would lose their jobs. Exact numbers were not yet available.

Scenario C, according to Peter Lancia, the district’s director of teaching and learning, would also involve cutting programs and possibly personnel, but rather than “cherry-picking,” the cuts would follow a strategic plan, viewable on the district’s website, which clearly lays out the district’s priorities based on current and projected future needs. Cuts would be made, he said, in low-priority areas.

“It’s more systemic,” he said this week.

Scenario C, Gousse said, would also allow for a possible tax increase, but only in conjunction with deep budget cuts.

Why Prides Corner?

Before Monday, no one at the district suggested publicly that any school be closed, but discussions about consolidating elementary schools in Westbrook are nothing new, and hints that budget crunches could make it a reality this time have been coming out since a School Committee meeting in August.

Back then, when Jeremy Ray resigned as principal of Canal School to take the district’s director of operations job, the district hired Vickie Hebert to take over as interim principal. At that time, committee Chairman Ed Symbol said for the record that he wasn’t sure he wanted to hire anyone at all. Symbol said the vacancy could be an opportunity to finally bring school consolidation to the table.

“We know we’re going to go there,” he said. “We’ve talked about this. It’s the next logical step.”

At last week’s meeting with the public at the middle school, with more than 30 parents, teachers, staff members, city councilors, state representatives and Mayor Colleen Hilton present, no one suggested closing any schools. But Ray, in making a presentation on the state of the district’s facilities, noted many problems with Prides Corner School, problems that would take millions to fix.

The school, Ray said, was built in 1950, and was renovated in 1965 and 1988. All other facilities in the district, he said, are either newer or have had more recent renovations and improvements. If the district keeps Prides Corner open, there would be a lot of work ahead, he said, which would cost a lot of money, regardless of what the rest of the new budget looks like.

“Prides Corner needs some serious attention,” he said

Ray later said the school’s immediate needs include:

• Replacing an aging boiler system, which he described as “end of life” and could go at any time: $800,000

• A new driveway with an updated drainage system: $450,000

• New doors and windows: $325,000

Those costs, together with various other immediate expenses such as fixing the roof and additional critical repairs, he said, would cost $2.8 million to fix, and that doesn’t even address long-term needs like electrical upgrades.

“It gives us a nice facelift, but we’ve still got a building that was built in 1950,” he said.

Closing Prides Corner, he said, would save the district a minimum of $500,000, and probably a lot more, easing the burden of finding other cuts in the budget.

Saving more

than money

Lancia noted that consolidating the district is more than just a cost-saving measure. It represents a moving away from an old-fashioned idea whose time has come. Right now, Saccarappa and Prides Corner schools teach K-2, and Congin and Canal schools teach grades 3-5.

Through his career, Lancia has been a teacher at Saccarappa and a principal at Congin. He remembers the thinking: that smaller campuses catering to the local community make for a friendlier learning environment.

It was a good concept, he said, and one mirrored in many other communities at the time, but through the years, new studies and data from the state show that splitting up elementary schooling between two buildings causes a difficult transition for kids going from second to third grade, one that impacts learning.

“We need to reconfigure what elementary school looks like,” he said.

The new idea, he said, is also a response to the public outcry to do things differently. Gousse has said from the beginning that “business as usual” no longer applies, and Ray said the reconfiguration represents a strong example of coming up with new ways to do things.

The district will present its final budget recommendation to the full School Committee in February. If approved, it will go to the City Council in March, and the public will vote on it in June. Between now and then, Gousse and the School Committee said they are seeking comment and suggestions.

Built in 1950, and renovated in 1965 and 1988, the Prides Corner School needs $2.8 million in work done. (Staff photo by Sean Murphy)
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