The BOF will review the budget and forward it, along with any suggested reductions, to the mayor’s office at the BOF meeting on Thursday, March 21. The mayor’s budget, with proposed town and schools spending, will go to the Town Council for final approval or denial.

“Given the current economic climate and the needs of the district and in order to maintain our highly qualified staff in contractual obligations, this is a reasonable request,” Forti said.

Salaries and benefits make up the bulk of the budget.

Forti spoke about some of the specific challenges faced by the school district. She spoke about a fluctuating school population that sees new students registering throughout the year. In part, the changing school population is due to the fact that renters make up 54 percent of enrollees. Currently, the district enrolls 2,903 students; of that number, 58 percent are eligible for free or reduced lunches.

“Some of our schools see a 40 percent turnover in student population in one school year,” Forti said, with “constant enrollments in and out [at] all different times throughout the year.”

This change can make certain costs difficult to predict. This past school year, Momauguin School had to open an extra classroom to serve in the influx of students.

This year, the school district is looking at a reduction in some grant funding; in particular, a federal preschool development grant totally $718,000 will be cut next year, Forti said.

“I’ve worked with my team to try and maintain programming even though a significant amount of the funding is going to be cut and look for alternative ways where we can still offer the programs without compromising what we feel our students need,” Forti said.

Forti said that the district is currently working on getting its chronic absenteeism rate below 10 percent. Currently, 14 percent of students are chronically absent, a number that is trending down.

“Chronic absenteeism is one of our accountability measures,” Forti said. “If kids aren’t in school, we can’t teach them.”

In the 2017-’18 fiscal year, the district met its chronic absenteeism target set at the state level by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

“We hit it because our budget and our grants allow us to hire individuals, call them truancy officers…who work with families, who work with staff members, who work with leadership in helping to understand what are the reasons kids aren’t coming to school,” Forti said.

She attributes the district’s falling absenteeism to its growing four-year graduation rate, this year up to 84 percent from 76 percent in 2017-’18.

“A compromise in this budget would reduce staff,” Forti said.

Forti said if the requested budget is reduced, truancy officers, math and reading coaches, and paraprofessionals would be the most likely to be cut, affecting the school system’s ability to hit ESSA targets. Class sizes could also increase if the district decided not to fill vacancies created by retiring teachers.

“We are only as good as the people we employ and the work that they do with the kids every day,” Forti said. “So we are really focused on talent pipelines for recruiting and retaining high quality individuals.”