Tim Ruggere, principal at the Ottoson Middle School, provides his e-mail update to parents and guardians, and this one was sent June 8:

He sent an  June 7 e-mail from Superintendent Kathleen Bodie explaining the administration's thinking behind the proposed cuts at the middle school. It says:

Over the last several weeks, I have received numerous emails regarding lost positions at the middle school. I sympathize with the sentiments expressed.

If we were not in the position of having to reduce the APS budget by $3.9 million, there is not one reduction we would choose to make.  All of the reductions put forward were difficult ones to decide given the impact these decisions will have on the middle school next year.

I have been able to respond to many of your emails, but not all.  For this reason, I want to share some of my comments with the whole Ottoson community, as well as, address some recent concerns regarding perceived budget discrepancies.

As I have said, it is with great sadness that we have to cut any of the teaching and counseling positions. Parents and community members who attended the December budget forum experienced the difficult choices necessary to reduce a school budget by millions of dollars when they were asked to make the reductions.

The budget reductions, approved by the School Committee on March 25, are spread fairly across all levels and cost centers of the system. The centrality of the classroom was given the highest priority when deciding on the reductions. We wanted, to the extent possible, to maintain teachers in the classroom. 

At the middle school, we also wanted to minimize the number of directed studies students will have in the fall. Given the reductions, most students will likely have one directed study per day.

Exploratory course (music, art, technology, and family and consumer science (FACS)) class sizes will be large; most will have 30 or more students in them. Class sizes for physical education classes will be over 40 students.

Identifying the specific reductions necessary to make while maintaining adequate staffing has been an evolving process. When developing next year’s schedule over the last two months, it became clear, for example, that the effect of not offering world language in the sixth grade (initially identified as a reduction) would result in half of the sixth grade being assigned two directed studies many days of the cycle.

The same outcome occurred when exploratory courses were significantly reduced. This was and remains unacceptable. The dilemma, however, is that once the APS budget has been approved by the School Committee, any additive changes made must be balanced by a corresponding subtraction from another budget line.

One of the alternative reductions chosen was a guidance position. This is why the guidance reduction does not appear in the voted budget, but is accounted for in the elective or world language reductions that are identified in the March 25 budget.

In a later budget document presented to the School Committee, this reduction is listed.  It is also listed on our web site.

Bridge The Gap Fund Add-Back List: Because of the number of directed studies and the class sizes of exploratory and PE classes, the Middle School Administration believed that the students at OMS would be best served by adding back positions that would provide direct instruction to students.

All of the reduction and add-back decisions were difficult ones to make. Choosing to reduce the guidance department from four to three people was done in the context of all of the other reductions that we were required to make.

Next year, we will still have three positions in the guidance department with the proposed reduction – two guidance counselors and one social worker.

To put our guidance staffing in context, other middle schools have larger ratios of students to guidance counselors than what will exist at OMS in the fall.

For example, this year Andover MS has 600 students with one guidance counselor. Wilmington MS has 900 students with two guidance counselors. Reading MS has 473 students with no guidance counselors (they instead have 1 school psychologist and 1 school adjustment counselor).

While larger student to counselor ratios exist in other districts, we would prefer to maintain our current staffing configuration, but that is not possible next year if we are to ensure that the maximum number of directed studies a student could have in any day of the cycle is one.

Our hope is that we can restore a guidance position the following year. We are concerned for the emotional and social health of our students.

In order to be responsive to these needs, we have plans to strengthen our partnership with AYCC to help provide more counseling support next year.

Budget Questions: When CFO Diane Johnson constructed the FY11 budget initially, she began with the FY10 payroll actuals, not the FY10 budget. She placed people in the FY11 budget according to where they were working in the district to the best of her knowledge.

This was a particularly difficult task for a new CFO given that some individuals work in more than one building.  As a result, in a few instances, some individuals were accounted for in different a cost center(s) in the FY11 budget than they were in the FY10 budget..

An example of this reallocation occurred in the OMS music department budget. While music appears to have an increase in people, there is no increase to the overall budget, nor is there an increase in music teachers.

The increase merely represents a shift in which cost center a person is budgeted.  In the FY10 budget, a music teacher who worked in two or more schools could have had his/her salary “divided” between the schools, whereas, in the FY11 budget his/her salary is accounted for in only one school.  

The increases in Guidance between FY10 and FY11 are accounted for by step and lane changes.  Reductions were listed at the end of each cost center rather than incorporated.

At the time the FY11 budget was being developed during the winter months, sixth grade world language was identified as one of the reductions.  As scheduling progressed through the spring, it became apparent that elective and language teachers needed to be restored to minimize the number of directed studies.

Bridge The Gap Fund Fundraiser on Sunday, June 6:  Congratulations to all of the students who sang so beautifully in support of raising money for the schools at the Bridge The Gap sponsored concert on Sunday.

Through their efforts, $6,600 was raised.  A special thank you is extended to Ms. Cori Gaffny and Mr. Greg Condakes for their outstanding conducting and hard work in preparing for the concert.

For those of you who were unable to attend, you missed the special treat of hearing Mr. Ruggere sing Stand By Me with his quartet partners, Mr. Skidmore, Mr. Curro, and Mr. Greeley. 

Thank you to everyone who has supported Bridge the Gap Fund in any way.  Your help and support is very much appreciated. Best Regards,Kathleen Bodie, Ed.D.Superintendent of Schools