As the Governor Speaks

This is absurd. Superintendent Bill Rearick is going over budget woes with the Tiverton School Committee. First came the bad news that the district has to budget an additional $248,715 for healthcare, putting its current working budget $1.1 million over the spending cap.

Rearick's recommendations were to:

• Use the $229,546 that it has this year (after TCC supposedly cut its budget) from changes to the pension system (to $911,000 over cap).
• Eliminate 2 special ed assistants, one part-time physical ed. high school, one in-school remediation position, and a part-time high school nurse (to $744,268)
• Cuts to office and student supplies, text books, and technology (to $624,440)

He says that the last couple of years, "we've been level funded," speaking, I guess, of non-personnel expenses. Regarding unions, they're "hoping to obtain certain concessions, but that's not going very well."

Things that Rearick blames for driving up budgets: end of magic Obama money, special ed requirements, career center tuitions, heating oil, electricity. No mention of the massive retroactive pay increase that the school committee approved last year. Rearick used that odious phrase about not having any more rabbits to pull out of the hat.

School Committee Chairman Jan Bergandy suggested that they might as well add $200,000 to the overage to cover litigation, because there's no way through the mess otherwise (he likened it to a messy divorce). Data point: eliminating 10 full-time teachers would get to the whole $1.1 million. Oddly, nobody has calculated that a few percentage points of salary/benefits packages across the board would easily do the same.

Committee member Danielle Coulter suggested that the district go out to bid for healthcare coverage. Union-friendly committee member Carol Herrmann brought up the new healthcare panel that the General Assembly created in the dead of night and suggested that it "makes no sense to come up with our own alternative." (Thanks Legislative Stooges!)