SHREWSBURY, Massachusetts – In the first public presentation of the 2012 fiscal budget, the Shrewsbury School Committee heard a presentation from Superintendent Joe Sawyer and new business manager Liam Hurley, on the budget situation for next year.  In keeping with the uncertain nature of state and federal funding at this time, the leadership chose not to make a specific recommendation for funding, but rather to highlight what the needs of the district were, based on maintaining the current state of programming, complying with mandated requirements, and leveraging money effictively in enhancing some programming, in order to reap the rewards elsewhere in the program.

Current estimates by the central office team indicate that we’re looking at a potential increase of approximately $4.3 Million dollars over FY11.   This is balanced by quite a bit of savings from other avenues, not the least of which was a federal jobs grant of over $1M. The total of these savings is expected to reach $2.49M, resulting in a net deficit of approximately $1.8M for FY12.

In the town managers initial budget projection, he indicated a potential of a reduction in the FY12 school funding of 700K, which would mean a delta of approximately $2.5 Million between the current town manager recommendations, and the cost required to fully fund the school programs.   This is not atypical for so early in the budget season, and no doubt as we get more clarification from Beacon Hill, and the town manger goes through and fine tunes his budget recommendation, this gab is expected to close substantially.

You can check out the complete presentation from the school department at this link.

http://schools.shrewsbury-ma.gov/egov/docs/12973471405243.pdf