AUBURN — With Ron Potvin opposing, the School Committee voted 6-1 Wednesday night to send its $38.2 million budget — up by 3 percent — to the City Council, then on to the June 10 referendum.
If approved, the school budget would increase by $58 the property taxes on a home valued at $150,000.
The bulk of the budget, $20.5 million, comes from state money. The rest, $14.3 million, from Auburn taxpayers. The increase in the mill rate is 5 percent.
The budget has been characterized by Superintendent Katy Grondin as one that maintains existing programs, gives raises to teachers who last year went without and covers higher special education and health insurance costs.
The budget cuts Land Lab teacher Jim Chandler to half time instead of eliminating that job, as earlier proposed. This fall, third-graders will receive iPads. Also in the budget is $93,944 for new positions, an instructional coach to help continue customized learning, an English language learner cultural broker and education technician and expanded sports at Auburn Middle School.
Voting for the budget were Tom Kendall, Larry Pelletier, Bonnie Hayes, Laurie Tannenbaum, Tracey Levesque and the mayor’s representative on the committee, City Councilor Mary LaFontaine.
LaFontaine said she voted for the budget because it would help create educated workers. “Our businesses will not grow if we don’t have talent for them to recruit.”
Potvin expressed his frustration with spending, saying since 2008 little has been cut, that in those years the budget has grown from $34.2 million to $37.1 million.
Grondin pointed out that spending has increased because of more state funding, that money asked of local taxpayers has been practically flat.
Potvin said he was not talking about local spending. “We have never cut, with the exception of $8,000 in 2009 and half a million in 2007,” Potvin said. “Every year, there’s always additional money, additional programs. Additions, additions, additions, for the kids, for the schools, for the teachers.”
Grondin disagreed, saying that last year $1.5 million was cut and the mill rate was reduced.
Potvin fired back that spending last year went up from $35.9 million to $37.1 million. “The only thing we ever cut is the amount of the additions of each year’s requests.”
He was not opposed to the 3 percent increase but with how the money would be spent.
“When we’re trying so hard to get teachers and students supplies they need, where do we put the priority? On a Somali translator and sports at the middle school,” he said. “We decide to go after our successful science program at the Land Lab, then cut school supplies, the very crux of what the public wants to see.”
Kendall said the budget has to go up each year as costs rise. “To think a huge organization such as education could survive with a flat budget every year is ludicrous,” Kendall said. The budget is not extravagant, he said. “It’s meeting the needs of students at a bare-minimum level.”
He sympathized with those who cannot afford higher taxes, but a reason the community is struggling “is because we have not invested in education.” Kendall agreed with LaFontaine that education is how to attract businesses, jobs and a larger tax base. Until Auburn tackles the problem of an underfunded school department, Kendall said the same problem will emerge every year.
That said, even though the city has not spent enough, “Auburn schools have done wonderful things in the last three years” that will lead to better-educated students,” Kendall said. Results won’t show “until this generation graduates. It takes time to get there; it takes money to get there.”
bwashuk@sunjournal.com
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