Budget-Stricken Wachusett Schools Spend Millions on Custodians
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Budget Woes
Since January, Superintendent Thomas G. Pandiscio has been lobbying for an $80.4 million budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which is $3.4 million more than what was approved for the current fiscal year.
Pandiscio has regularly pointed out that the district has the lowest per pupil expenditure of any regional school district in the state, and said that the district spends only $125 per pupil on instructional materials.
Because of the state’s budget woes, the entire $3.4 million increase would be borne by the towns, who are each struggling with budget difficulties of their own. Town officials have pushed back, saying that the additional funds would devastate town services.
Pandiscio justified the increase, saying it is needed because the district has already wrung out all of the excess from the budget and has identified all of the possible savings.
At a regional selectboard meeting last week, Pandiscio said athletics, extracurricular activities, school libraries and 6 assistant principals would have be to cut, along with 56 teachers in order to operate with the same amount of money as last year.
Custodial Staffing
The end of the year report for Fiscal 2011 posted on the district’s website shows a district-wide custodial salary expense of $2,299,461, with an additional professional salary expense of $150,775 for maintenance of buildings.
Figures for Fiscal 2012 and for 2013 show all salaries included in a single line item.
Peter Brennan, Business Manager for the district said that figures are not broken out to individual line items until after the fiscal year is completed.
Duncan Leith, chairman of the Wachusett Regional School District Committee defended the district’s spending.
“I can’t verify the details, but if they’re from the budget website, they must be right. We’ve always been criticized for cutting our custodial costs,” Leith said. “We’ve spent a lot on these buildings, and they deserve to be maintained. The high school also is over 390,000 square feet.”
Joseph Sova, vice chairman of the school committee, said that he could not get into specific details regarding the upcoming budget.
“We all trust the administration to appoint the staff the district needs,” Sova said. “There have been times when we’ve seen the numbers – at the annual budget retreat in February – and probably discussed it then.
“We don’t have a spending problem, we have a revenue problem. The superintendent and administration have done an excellent job wringing out the excesses.”
Pandiscio was out of the office for the day yesterday and did not return calls seeking comment.
Here's a list of how many custodians each school has on staff:
Wachusett Regional High School
At the high school alone, there are 19 full time custodians, and 2 part time custodians, in addition to a facility manager, whose responsibility it is to clean and maintain the 412,000 square foot building and grounds, which serves just over 2000 students.
William Beando, principal of the high school, said he was not surprised by the number of people on the school’s staff. “I see the work they do, and this is a large building,” he said.
When asked about whether spending millions on custodial personnel was the best use of limited resources, Beando deferred to Pandiscio and the school committee.
“I leave that comment to those in charge of the budget,” he said.
Sova, who led the school committee’s motion to approve the $80.4 million budget, said that the district had little room to cut, except for personnel.
“If the budget doesn’t pass, we’ll start looking at different scenarios, and we’ll give the towns the best education we can, with the money we have.”
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