BRUNSWICK — Superintendent of Schools Paul Perzanoski said he hopes to shield Brunswick’s elementary schools from staffing cuts as the school department stares down a $3 million budget gap.
On Thursday night, the School Board held its third workshop in a series designed to encourage public scrutiny of all school programs.
The topic Thursday was K-8 education, which saw a significant shakeup during the 2010-11 school year. Kindergartners and first- graders from Longfellow School and Jordan Acres School were relocated to Coffin School, while students in second through fifth grades attend the new Harriet Beecher Stowe (HBS) School.
At a February workshop of the school department’s budget committee, School Board member Rich Ellis — chairman of that committee and the facilities committee — said that there’s little room at the K-5 level for expansion.
“We are at capacity with K-5,” Ellis said. “We don’t have a room in our current buildings to put any more students.”
Perzanoski said Thursday that the school department’s facilities needs should top the list, with what he called “ aging facilities” at Coffin School and Brunswick Junior High School.
In his presentation Thursday, Perzanoski wrote that “the most important factor in our quest to improve the school department is to support, pass and complete the Facilities Master Plan.”
That plan, contracted with the Portland-based firm Harriman, Inc., will outline the school department’s facilities needs.
In January, the School Board recommended against pursuing the purchase of the former Times Record building for use as a bus garage and received estimates for bringing the mothballed Jordan Acres School back online, based on that survey.
“If the community is really going to get behind something and get behind it in full force, this is where it needs to be,” Perzanoski said.
Proposed cuts
In Thursday’s presentation, Perzanoski made a host of recommendations for the K-8 program, including staff cuts at the junior high school and a call to preserve staff levels at the elementary schools, which he said bore the brunt of last year’s reductions.
The possible staff cuts that Perzanoski recommended Thursday include a half-time equivalent position in the guidance counseling department and one staff position in math, language arts, science, social studies, consumer science/ health and resource assistance.
To backfill for those cuts, Perzanoski said, staff would need to be taken from the school’s Response to Intervention (RTI) teaching staff, which is focused on providing assistance to students struggling in school.
Currently, Perzanoski said eight teachers are assigned to the RTI staff. That number would drop to six or four.
Perzanoski recommended against any staff cuts at the elementary level or to the school department’s literacy and math support staff.
Wishes
Aside from gloomy talk of cuts, Perzanoski also set out his goals for what he would like to see added, including staff, in Brunswick schools.
That list includes adding a preschool program, a school psychologist in each building, increasing elementary teachers by at least one in grades K-2, adding two teachers focused on “gifted and talented” students, adding one alternative education teacher and education technician at BJHS, and a adding a feebased summer school program.
Perzanoski also said he would like to see educational consultants at each school serving grades K-8. Those consultants would provide support to teachers in everything from planning lessons to analyzing testing information and making strategies to respond to those results.
Perzanoski also said he would like to see the school department add a clinical day treatment program — including a clinical educator, a therapist/counselor, psychiatric consultant and a mental health worker — at each level.
With students as young as 5 who are sometimes on a “cocktail of medications,” Perzanoski said, the schools need staff who are “versed in mental health issues and education.”
Proposed budgets
The proposed additions and cuts presented by the superintendent Thursday did not include cost estimates, but detailed budgets outlined planned spending through the department’s K-8 schools.
Each school — Coffin, HBS and BJHS — all submitted budgets coming in above last year’s numbers, which principals at the elementary level said is largely a result of consolidating four schools into HBS and Coffin.
Until April 25, when the school department is expected to submit a final budget to the Town Council, school officials will continue to mull the numbers.
The current budget materials under consideration by school officials can be viewed at http://ow.ly/9PM9g. A full schedule of the school department’s upcoming budget meetings is also available at http://ow.ly/9PMLm.
dfishell@timesrecord.com
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