Teaching Assistant Positions at West Tisbury Are Under Threat as Budget Shortfalls Loom

By CHRIS BURRELL

Faced with a $400,000 shortfall in their budget, school leaders from the three up-Island towns are now planning to cut back the roster of teaching assistants at the West Tisbury School.

The Up-Island Regional School District committee will decide next Thursday whether to lay off three teaching assistants or reduce all assistants to a four-day work week.

That move alone would save the school only about $50,000. Other cuts are planned but this proposal is the only reduction that would directly affect personnel.

School committee chairman Diane Wall said principal Elaine Pace - who is off-Island at a conference - will make the final recommendation next week.

"Teacher assistants work so hard for not as much money, and they really perform an incredible function," said Ms. Wall.

School committee member Jeffrey (Skipper) Manter urges his board to recommend cutting back bonuses for school administrators, who are typically eligible for two per cent performance increases.

"It wouldn't add up to a lot, but it was the leadership principle," he said. "You're weeding out the ones who make the least. I say let the sacrifice start at the top."

There are 16 teaching assistants at the West Tisbury School. Many of them plan to attend next week's meeting. An exact time for the meeting has not yet been posted.

If the existing positions were cut back to a four-day week, a 20 per cent cut in pay would still leave the employees with health insurance benefits intact. But the monetary impact would force some of them to take on another job or join the pool of substitute teachers, said Victoria Phillips, a teaching assistant who has worked at the school for four years.

"People rely on it," she said. "We all work directly with the kids, especially the ones who need extra help."

Ms. Phillips is hoping that parents come out to the meeting and hear what school committee members are preparing to do.

"I help children get on and off the buses every day, and the community expects to have that extra person," she added.

Ms. Wall said the school board could also go back to the towns to ask for the money. Voters in the three up-Island towns took on a $6.7 million budget, up 14 per cent from last year.

Other cuts on the table include scrapping computer and book purchases at the West Tisbury School worth $60,000, and ending the a la carte menu in the cafeteria, for a savings of $16,000. Attrition of staff would allow committee members to cut another $30,000.

The shortfall is due mostly to a reduction in state aid. Ms. Wall said the state revenue picture could have been much worse.

"The state has done a good job of getting us more money," she said. "It's not as bleak as it was."

The other source of the shortfall is coming from reimbursements to the Martha's Vineyard Public Charter School.

The formula is based on per pupil spending, and with the number of up-Island students now enrolled at the charter school, the assessment to the regional school has shot up to $749,000, up from $680,000 last year.

"That's almost the whole nut of the $767,074 in state Chapter 70 aid," said Ms. Wall. She and other school committee members are lobbying state legislators for some relief from the pressure of charter school reimbursements.

What makes the situation for the Up-Island school district particularly hard is the fact that the Chilmark School is so small, driving up the per pupil assessment paid out to the charter school. That figure stands at roughly $16,000 per student.

Plus, there's the issue of a cap on reimbursements for charter schools in the state. It's supposed to be no more than nine per cent of a school budget going to a charter school.

But the up-Island district is one of just three in the state saddled with a higher cap of just under 12 per cent.

Ms. Wall said the up-Island region is now at that limit, and many school committee members believe it's unfair. Some point out that when students from outside their district attend one of the up-Island schools, the state mandates that they can charge another town $5,000 per pupil.