Guest MINDSETTER™ Cotey Collins:Worcester Public Schools Facing Budget Shortfalls

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Cotey Collins, GoLocalWorcester Guest MINDSETTER™

For the past two fiscal years, we've witnessed that we’re unprepared to address budget shortfalls in a fiscally responsible way. For instance, in FY2015 we lost 44 teaching jobs. In result of the job losses, classroom size increased. Statistics prove that students fail in very large learning environments. Also, students with IEP’s and 504 plans won’t be provided their full accommodations in that kind of learning environment. If we don’t understand or even think about the consequences of cutting teaching jobs then there’s a likely chance that we’ll make fiscally irresponsible choices in the future.

If elected to the Worcester School Committee I would like to focus on preparing for budget shortfalls along with dealing with the issue of school safety. I've already drafted a solution to prepare our school district for budget shortfalls. I want to work with our state delegation to pass legislation to allow municipal governments to save your tax dollars to prepare for budget shortfalls. I have a confession to make — I’m fiscally conservative. I’m not afraid to hold onto your tax dollars. If the legislature passes legislation allowing municipal governments to save money for budget shortfalls then I will push to cut $1 million from the Worcester Public School budget. My budget cuts will mainly focus on cutting bureaucratic salaries and positions at the DAB (Durkin Administrative Building). Also, I want to return the Teacher Grants to the teachers. Currently, those grants are being used to fund bureaucratic jobs.

Another issue we must avoid when dealing with budgetary matters is deficit spending. For instance, in F.Y. 2016 we now have a $30,000 deficit. The root of the problem was that our charter schools reimbursements came $650,000 below what our local officials had estimated. Our school district budgeted $350,000 extra next year with some shortfall, but we would still have to make up $300,000. Now, to fix this problem we must think about scaling back principal and assistant principal salaries. The national average salary for school principals are around $85,000 per-year. For Worcester Public School principals they get an average between $100,000-$130,000 per-year. The school committee must rethink about scaling back those salaries to around the national average. Most importantly, our elected officials must learn that we shouldn’t spend money we don’t have.

Two Solutions That Could Have Avoided Deficit Spending:

1. Scale back Principal and Assistant Principal salaries 5–10%
2. Scale back bureaucratic salaries 5–10% and eliminate some bureaucratic positions

Cotey Collins is running for a seat on Worcester's School Committee in this fall's election. Collins is a recent graduate of Worcester Technical High School and an outspoken advocate for stricter safety measures in Worcester's secondary schools. This is Collins' first run for elected office. To read more about Collins, please see GoLocalWorcester's 10 Questions with School Committee Candidate Cotey Collins.