Attached is a recommendation from the City Manager to be presented to the City Council for the October 1, 2013 City Council meeting that provides an additional $172,000 of city contribution to the Worcester Public Schools for FY14. Upon approval of the City Council, I will submit a supplemental item for next week’s School Committee meeting for appropriation of these new funds. We currently are still looking to balance class sizes throughout the district, and these funds will immediately be used to hire three teachers at the secondary level. I appreciate the work on behalf of the Mayor to get FY14 spending to the minimum level for net school spending, and this additional funding will achieve meeting the required level for the first time since FY10. I also appreciate the efforts of the City Manager to meet our net school spending deficit by providing this additional appropriation. I also appreciate the support of the City Council to provide an initial $255,000 to the WPS in June and I look forward to their support next week on these additional funds. Both the City CFO Tom Zidelis and Chief Financial and Operations Officer Brian Allen have worked closely over the past several days and both agree that this additional funding will place the city approximately $130,000 above the required spending (to include the carry forward deficit).I have a couple of outstanding questions on this (and it's time once again to be grateful for administrators who answer their email on weekends), including how $172,000 gets us $130,000 above when we were $177,000 below, and if the recommended teachers are additions to those we have or are already in the classroom.
I will update this post as I have more information, and clearly, we'll have this all much clearer by midweek.
UPDATE: Superintendent Boone says this will be additional teachers.
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