The Sagamore surveyed 150 students about their opinions of a possible override. School Committee Chairman Alan Morse said the sudden influx of students in Brookline may be detrimental to education if an override is not passed.
According to School Committee Chairman Alan Morse, the quality of education at the high school is at risk of dropping for all students.
If a tax override to expand the Brookline public schools’ budget is not proposed by the Board of Selectmen and passed at the ballot box by town voters, the rapid expansion of Brookline’s student population, a 30 percent increase since 2006, according to the Capital Improvements Subcommittee of the School Committee, would be economically unsustainable and would require significant sacrifices, Morse said.
“It would end up reducing the quality of the education that we are able to deliver to every one of our students,” he said.
An override would raise Brookline’s levy limit, allowing the town government to raise property taxes by a larger percentage this year than it is generally sanctioned to raise them. An override would likely cost Brookline residents a median of $500 annually for single-family homes and $150 annually for condominiums, according to the Final Report produced by the Brookline School Population and Capacity Exploration Committee.
According to Superintendent Bill Lupini, there is a broad host of problems, largely financial, that come with the growth of the student population, ranging from the sizes of common spaces such as the cafeteria to the need for a larger staff.
“Our current operating budget can’t support the teachers and supplies and materials and textbooks and technology that’s necessary to do the quality of schooling that we’ve done here in Brookline,” Lupini said.
Morse agreed with Lupini’s statement, stressing the student to teacher ratio.
“If we have no additional money to build any new classrooms or to hire any new teachers, the only alternative would be to increase our class sizes,” Morse said.
According to the Capital Improvements Subcommittee, this year’s kindergarten class, which will graduate from the high school in 2025, includes 666 students across the town. By contrast, only 439 students are enrolled in the class of 2014.
“A school district that has 5,500 kids is different from a school district that has 7,500 kids in its culture,” Lupini said. “This is just the beginning of what I think is a number of years of these kinds of discussions about how we make sure that we ensure quality.”
The Board of Selectmen created an Override Study Committee to investigate the town’s financial situation and to make a detailed recommendation to the selectmen regarding the possibility of an override proposal. The committee is also responsible for exploring ways other than an override to find the money that the school system needs.
According to Committee Co-Chairman Susan Ditkoff, who is also the Vice Chairman of the School Committee, the Committee’s task is to examine a range of options, including cuts to town programs outside of the school system.
“It’s the work of the Override Study Committee to figure out what specifically our most important needs are, how they might grow and how we might address them,” Ditkoff said.
According to Ditkoff, raising the levy limit is a complicated issue.
“We have people in town who are struggling financially, so we have to be very aware of the impact at all levels on taxpayers,” Ditkoff said.
Morse also noted that an override would affect not only the families of students in the Brookline public schools but also a great many other residents.
“We have to ask all of our citizens to pay more taxes when only about 17 percent of these households actually have students in our schools,” Morse said. “We have to worry about the elderly people and other people who are not earning a tremendous amount of money because they may not be able to afford to pay those additional taxes.”
In a poll of 150 students, the Sagamore found that there was a diversity of opinion about the potential override, with 46 percent in favor, 35 percent opposed and 19 percent uncertain.
Lupini said that his role in the process of developing an official proposal is centered around presenting information about the potential benefits of an override.
“Our job is to really put forward [the evidence] for people,” he said, “so they can see the value in making a commitment to increase their own taxes.”
Ben Gladstone can be contacted at [email protected].
