When deliberating the budget tonight I would urge that voters consider the following items in the budget for cutting:

1. – $40,000. – Approximate – Cost of ES Para that Budget proposal explained would result from combining an Office Para with an SSC para. The amount was not taken from budget however.

2. – $29,000. – Amount of increase for new computor equipment. Note this is just the amount of the increase. Still left is about $95,000 – the amount in the current budget. In addition remember that last June a portion of the ‘surplus’ was spent on new computors.

3. – $25,000. – Amount of increase of “Maintenance and Repairs’ line. Again this leaves the amount at $180,000.

4. – $4,000. – $12,000. – MS Field trips. Increasing this line $4,000 when it’s current amount of $20,000 for 3 grades of kids is about double that for the ES ($12,000. for 6 grades) or HS ($10,000 for 4 grades). Some might think this should be cut back to $12,000. – similar to the amounts for the other schools.

5. – $60,000. – Approximate cost of one ES teacher. One grade currently has 58 students spread among 4 teachers while 3 teachers would be appropriate per current policy (Try to keep under 20 per class).

6. – $13,000. – ? Professional Development. While 13k proposed increase this year might not seem like much, that is on top of last years increase nearly doubling from $88,000. to $165,000. (And how did they manage to do that with a flat budget?)

7. – ? Raises for non Union staff such as administers. Most of us still arent getting raises as the economy spuitters to a hopeful recovery, yet the district continues to give yearly raises. Can’t they get by on the same generous salary as last year just once?

It seems to me that with this quick list as a start, and with a few more items not increased we are getting close to the amount of the proposed increase. Let’s keep it level (the same as last year).