HomeMy WebLinkAbout2008-02-11-SC-min LEXINGTON SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING
Monday, February 11, 2008
Cary Hall
1605 Massachusetts Avenue
Present: Superintendent Paul Ash, School Committee Chair Tom Diaz, School Committee
Members Helen Cohen, Margaret Coppe, Tom Griffiths and Ravi Sakhuja. The minutes were
taken by Leora Tec.
I. Call to Order (Ellen Stone Room)
II. Executive Session (Ellen Stone Room)
III. Return to Public Session and Welcome (Cary Hall Auditorium) (Tom Diaz)
IV. Public Comment
Jennifer Lawrence (Bowman parent): Large class sizes at Bowman.
Evelyn Granger (Bowman parent): Physical capacity of the various schools.
Alexandra Kahn (Bowman parent): Child comments on stress on teacher and students with
25 vs. 19 kids.
Jennifer Vogelzang (Bowman PTA president): Kindergarten at Bowman.
Liz Weiss (Bowman parent): Equity in class size.
Al Deacon (Bowman parent): What are the trade-offs?
V. Members' Reports/Members' Concerns
Helen Cohen: Chinese American Association Dinner. They provide funding for Diversity
task force award. Feb 29 is the deadline for nominations.
Tom Griffiths: Right now we have a global summary for the entire School Committee
budget. I'd like us to split out three items and call it School Committee out of district budget
requests. The salary line for the out of district coordinator and two expenses that are on the
back page: net SPED out of district tuitions and net SPED transportation. This falls in line
with our earlier vote to provide to Town Meeting a Burlington-like presentation of our
expenses.
Ravi Sakhuja: Expressed concern about the sinks at Harrington. They are not yet repaired
and he asked for clarification on the reasons for the delay.
SC Meeting 2/11/08 page#1
VI. Discussion
1. FY09 Budget: Mary Ellen Dunn opened the discussion. The Committee discussed the
budget with Ms. Dunn and Dr. Ash.
Motion: School Committee resolves to ask Town Meeting to lower its FY08 budget by
$350K and also the School Committee asks Town Meeting to establish a SPED
stabilization fund and to initially deposit$350 in that stabilization account(Griffiths,
Cohen). The motion passed 5-0.
Motion that the schools leave the next$350 that may occur in a surplus unspent,with
the understanding that it would probably flow into free cash, and that the schools would
then recommend that at the next convenient moment that$350 would be deposited into
an appropriate stabilization fund, the kind of stabilization fund that we are considering
at the moment is the SPED stabilization fund and/or a stabilization fund intended to
help us avoid overrides (Griffiths, Coppe).
There was discussion on the motion.
The motion passed 5-0.
Motion to go into executive session for the purpose of discussing collective bargaining
(Sakhuja, no second).
VII. Action Items
1. Vote to Approve the FY09 Budget
Motion that the School Committee set its budget amount at $65, 097, 299 (Griffiths,
Cohen).
Brief comments about the budget.
The motion passed with 4 in favor and one abstaining (Sakhuja)
The Committee will meet on March 3rd at 7:30 and on February 26. The latter will be a
discussion and public comment on full-day kindergarten.
Motion to approve the minutes of Jan 23, 2008, January 24, 2008, January 28, 2008 and
executive session of January 28, 2008 (Coppe, Sakhuja). The motion passed 5-0.
VIII. Motion to Adjourn (Sakhuja, Griffiths) The motion passed 5-0.
SC Meeting 2/11/08 page#2
SC Meeting 2/11/08 page #3