WILMINGTON, MA – Wilmington School Superintendent Mary DeLai published her weekly blog post on Friday, unveiling her recommended budget for fiscal year 2017 (July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017). Read DeLai’s blog post HERE or below:
Each year, as Superintendent of Schools, it is my responsibility to present to the Wilmington School Committee a Superintendent’s Recommended Budget that reflects the funding necessary for Wilmington Public Schools to achieve its mission and vision. In accordance with Wilmington School Committee policy, one of our most critical fiscal management goals is to establish levels of funding that will provide high quality education for the students. Furthermore, the budget development process must ensure that the annual operating budget accurately reflects this school system’s goals and objectives. In accordance with these policies and the responsibilities assigned to me, on January 20th, I presented to the School Committee the FY’17 Superintendent’s Recommended Budget in the amount $37,645,468, an increase of $1,447,910, or 4.0% over the FY’16 Budget.
As we all know, the job of educating the youth of Wilmington becomes more and more complex each year. New federal or state mandates seem to appear each and every year. Over the last several years, in addition to new curriculum frameworks and a heightened focus on standardized testing and accountability, we have also had to adjust to a new educator evaluation system, new student discipline regulations, new regulations pertaining to ELL students and requirements for teachers to obtain Sheltered English Immersion (SEI) endorsement, crisis management and suicide prevention training, increased state reporting requirements, new physical restraint regulations, and additional assessments required for Kindergarten students. These federal and state mandates have led to what is commonly being referred to as “initiative fatigue” among our educators and administrators.
In this environment, we find our resources – time, personnel, and financial – increasingly strained by our need to accommodate students who present with a greater variety and more complex set of academic and behavioral challenges. Equally important is the challenge of ensuring that all students are held to rigorous academic expectations that adequately prepare them for college, work, and life in our global society. The challenge here is one of strategic focus. We need to ensure that sufficient resources are invested and strategically directed at the programs, equipment and materials, staffing, and training necessary to support our mission and achieve our vision.
This budget was developed with significant input from our school community including parents, staff, and district and school administrators. The FY’17 Superintendent’s Recommended Budget reflects the priorities outlined in the district’s Strategy for Improvement of Student Outcomes, 2015 – 2018. This budget request supports our efforts to achieve our established strategic objectives of:
- Developing Learning Leaders;
- Ensuring Equity and Excellence;
- Creating Safe and Supportive Schools; and
- Achieving Operational Effectiveness.
The proposed budget funds known and expected collectively bargained contractual obligations; known and anticipated special education expenses; and district and school improvement efforts. The major areas of focus in supporting student achievement and growth include improving literacy curriculum and instruction particularly at the elementary levels, continuing the work of aligning curriculum to the state’s Curriculum Frameworks, ensuring appropriate interventions and supports for struggling learners, shifting instructional practice to ensure readiness for future college and career pathways, and providing stronger behavioral, social, and emotional supports for students to ensure a whole child approach to educational outcomes.
Budget Highlights:
- Improving student supports through increases to adjustment counselor, health education, English Language Learner, and behavioral health staffing and programmatic improvements;
- Enhancing service delivery to students with special needs through job-embedded coaching, consulting, and professional development in inclusive practices and differentiated instruction;
- Developing leadership capacity and facilitating teacher collaboration through targeted professional development and innovative scheduling; and
- Supporting the transition to a balanced literacy model of reading and writing instruction through job-embedded coaching and professional development.
The FY’17 Superintendent’s Recommended Budget document, which can be found HERE, seeks to provide interested readers with sufficient background information and detail as to how budgeted and expended funds have and will continue to support our district’s objectives, priorities, and improvement goals. We have tried to the best of our ability to balance the critical needs of the district with the resource constraints faced by our community. We look forward to the discussions and deliberations to follow.
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