HomeMy WebLinkAbout2007-04-04-SC-min
LEXINGTON SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
School Administration Building
Conference Room
1557 Massachusetts Avenue
Lexington, MA 02420
Present: Superintendent Paul Ash; School Committee Chair Tom Diaz, School
Committee Members Helen Cohen, Margaret Coppe, Tom Griffiths and Ravi
Sakhuja. Minutes taken by Leora Tec.
The meeting was convened at 5:17 pm.
I. Call to Order (Tom Diaz)
II. Discussion Items
A.Update on FY 07 budget
B.School Committee position on Town Meeting Articles
Ann Frymer’s presentation on Article 20: I would like the School Committee to adopt a
transportation policy for a sick SPED student that has to be transported in a private
vehicle other than the parent’s, to be accompanied by an aide.
Paul Ash: Thank you. I spoke to people at Harrington and to the SPED people. I regret
what happened in your vehicle. I looked at responsibility. Here a parent delegated you to
pick up child during school hours. Can we put an aide inside the parent’s vehicle? During
the day there may be different people with the child. In these rare cases we should do
what we can to make a best effort to have an aide accompany a parent or parent delegate
in the vehicle.
The discussion involved safety concerns for the driver and the child and the question of
whether or not a policy could be written to cover this kind of situation. The School
Committee decided to oppose the Article with the understanding that there be written
procedures for nurses to use.
Motion to oppose Article 20 (Griffiths, Cohen).
Helen Cohen: With understanding that there be written procedures for the nurses to use.
The motion passed 5-0
FY 07
Mary Ellen Dunn: We will need an additional $447,744K for SPED from Town
Meeting. Some of the new programs will address this. We froze the budget in Feb. This is
a very small percentage of the entire budget. We don’t have the resources unless we start
laying off people.
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Energy budgets for New Fiske and New Harrington: the costs are running well beyond
what one would expect for new schools. This afternoon Tim O’Leary quantified the
amount Fiske (running 24 hours a day and bringing in 32 instead of 9 K cubic feet of air)
th
since Jan 7 through June, estimated to have cost: $54-78K. Harrington cost $104-156K
additional electric costs. At Fiske natural gas costs (and we should not be paying any)
$40-50K. In sum the total energy is probably $198-284K.
So SPED plus energy is $650K-730K. Actual projected deficit is $576K (.9% of the
budget) We need to ask Town Meeting for supplemental appropriations.
Tom Diaz: For the public’s information: We have a balance in the preventive
maintenance account (from Question 3 on the last override) that we are not using for this.
Ravi Sakhuja: We should figure out what is needed by way of improvements and make
these changes in the Harrington school; that is what it is for.
Helen Cohen: What’s wrong and whose fault is it is also something we need to be
pursuing.
There was a discussion that included SPED and energy costs.
Motion to recess and reconvene at the summit (Cohen, Griffiths). The motion passed
5-0.
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