hard deadlines

The Portsmouth schools are managing the current year's budget conservatively in anticipation of bad news about state aid, with building principals held to an 80% spending rate, district Finance Director Christine Tague told the School Committee at the meeting last night. Tague presented last month's financials and projected the schools to be about $100K under budget for the year.

"We're well positioned for a small state aid cut," said Tague, "But anything larger would be dificult." Each one-percent cut, given the state contribution, would be about $54K. But while the administration and members of the committee did not speculate on any anticipated cuts, the magnitude of the state's budget crisis clearly led to considering pretty catastrophic scenarios. "A 10% cut could be half a million dollars," Tague said.

You would think that the two new committee members, Angela Volpicelli and Marilyn King, would have wanted to stick around for an agenda item like this, but they had left right after the presentation on regional special education. Volpicelli asked precisely one question: "How many special education students as of today are being serviced out of state?" Regional director, Trish Martins, promised to investigate the number.

Then Volpicelli and King left. WTF? Now look, I know I'm going to be accused of being a partisan hack, but these people are Democrats. You'd think, given that they're going to be sitting on the committee in just a week, that they might stick around to hear about the financial situation in the middle of the biggest freaking meltdown since forever.

But I digress. Oh, and did I mention that there was nobody there from the PCC Town Videotaping Committee to record the session for public access?

Which was a shame. Ms. Martins' presentation on special education was quite heartening. Portsmouth's investment in co-teaching does seem to be paying off, with over 80% of students now participating in their regular classes 80% of the day (already meeting state target, and 15% better than the state average). And as the district has been developing local specialized programs, the cost for sending students to out-of-district placements for services has decreased by $830K compared to last year.

Yes, Portsmouth will see some increase in the contribution to the regional special education budget, but that also includes local teaching positions which have been shifted to regional roles.

"You're seeing out-of-district tuition go down," said Superintendent Susan Lusi, "And you're also seeing more special education staff moved to regional budget lines, that way we're sharing in the cost. This last year, we moved 4 positions to the region, paying roughly a third of what we had been."

In other business, Lusi announced that the invitations for January's strategic planning session are due to go out shortly. And the committee formally commended the work of the Portsmouth High School science department.

"All too often we hear about teachers 'having the summer off,'" said Vice-Chair Dick Carpender, reviewing the amount of work department members had put in on professional development in the off season. "I count 156 person-days that science department staff put in over summer to make themselves better teachers and offer our students more in-depth teaching."

The Committee also voted to commend the hard work of PHS coaches Mike Lunney and John Blaess, as well as students Matt Murphy, Dylan Mello, and Jordan Lyons, for organizing donations of soccer equipment to be sent to Iraq to help our troops stationed there build relationships with the local community.

"We shipped over 72 boxes of items," said Lunney. "This broadened [our students'] view of things going on overseas. There will be Iraqi children wearing Portsmouth jerseys."

And my favorite tidbit from last night's meeting — in addition to the new state requirement that all 8th graders take a technology proficiency exam at the end of this year, Assistant Superintendent Colleen Jermain noted that next year, that requirement is extended to staff.

"In the fall," said Jermain, "Teachers, administrator, and principals will all have to take the assessment as well. All part of federal grants."

For anyone who doubted that our technology warrants were necessary. It ain't just a luxury anymore. It's a Federal mandate. No teacher left behind.