For various reasons, technical and otherwise, I won’t be posting today. Rest assured I’ll be back to my normal posting schedule on Monday.
I’ll still be moderating comments, so feel free to jump in on the many discussions happening on the blog. If you’ve missed some of the recent comments – and there have been some good ones – scroll through the posts or check the Recent Comments section in the sidebar.
Want to discuss something new that isn’t already being talked about on the blog? Feel free to add a comment to this post.
I’ll see you again on Monday. Until then, stay dry.
Susan,
Just a quick thank you for this very good blog and for the very good service it renders to us all.
ditto; you must put in so much time on this. Thank you!
Thank you both. I’m happy so many of you choose to participate in this site. Good to know I’m not just talking to myself!
i read that you were taking the day off and i thought “good for her, well deserved” and then i did have a moment when i had a twinge of “what will the sheeple do?”
enjoy the weekend!
Two follow up questions to my prior post that I wanted to address:
1. If Southborough spent the same percentage of its budget on schools as Northborough, how much would that increase the allocation to the Southborough schools?
Short answer: $4.5 million more in FY2010; $3.5 million more in FY2011. Arguably, this would all benefit K-8 non-SPED if we assume SPED and Algonquin amounts do not change.
Longer answer:
$4.536 million more in fiscal 2010 (61% of the $44.073 million budget ($26.886), less the $22.35 million that was spent). If all of this were to benefit K-8 exclusive of SPED (assuming SPED is mandated by law and Algonquin receives no incremental benefit), that would be an increase of 38% to the non-SPED K-8 budget of $11.66 million.
$3.526 million more in fiscal 2011 (60.7% of the $43.788 million budget ($26.575), less the $23.05 million that was spent). Same assumptions as above (SPED and Algonquin), and that would be an increase of 31% to the non-SPED K-8 budget of $11.47 million.
2. What is Northborough doing differently than Southborough that they can spend more of their budget on schools?
Short answer:
Debt service for Southborough ($4.26 million in FY 2011) is more than twice as much as Northborough ($1.99 million in FY 2011) as a percentage of its budget.
Longer answer:
Debt service for Southborough in FY 2010 of $4.475 million (10.2% of the budget), and in FY2011 of $4.26 million (9.7% of the budget).
Debt service for Northborough in FY 2010 of $2.4 million (5.4% of the budget), and in FY2011 of $1.99 million (4.4% of the budget).
If Southborough’s debt service obligations were the same as a percentage of the budget as Northborough, we would have had $2.1 million more for other expenditures in FY2010 and $2.33 million more in FY 2011.
Earl
You have hit one of the nails on the head. Our debt service as a % of the budget is one of the highest in the commonwealth. It is actually worse when you tease out the Algonquin debt service which is necessary to get a comparison with comparable communities.
The good news is that by 2014 or so some of the debt begins to roll off our books providing some tax relief. Provided we don’t take on any new debt for things like a police station 2014 would be a good year to have a serious discussion about a Prop 2.5 override. We could say to the voters, our debt payments are going down and we would like your permission to keep taxes constant and use the money you were paying for debt for services.
There are ways to transition to this point but it will not be easy.
A bit off topic, but there was a thrilling basketball game at St. Mark’s last night. Here’s a link to the ESPN Boston article:
http://espn.go.com/blog/boston/high-school/post/_/id/5142/st-marks-makes-thrilling-comeback-over-nmh