Superintendent Kelly Offers Suggestions for $575,505 in Carry Forward Funding

Each year the Revere Public School Committee takes a look at how much ‘carry forward’ funding flowed from the previous fiscal year and decides whether or not to spend some, all or none of the money.

In a typical fiscal year some of the money budgeted will go unspent and it’s the School Committee’s responsibility to appropriate that free cash carried forward and see where it can best be used in the current fiscal year.

This year there was $575,505 in carry forward money and Revere Public School Superintendent Dr. Dianne Kelly offered several suggestions on how to spend the money at Tuesday’s School Committee Ways and Means subcommittee meeting.

Kelley aks included $50,000 for a new Parent Information Center (PIC)/English Learners (EL) secretary, $60,000 to redesign the school’s PIC office, $180,000 to hire three EL teachers, $15,000 for NEASC Committee Expenses, $10,000 for Transportation Leads stipends, and $150,000 for new cameras for Rumney Marsh Academy and the Paul Revere schools for a grand total of $465,000.

“There are several requests from different administrators that I did put together,” said Kelly. “We worked with the administrative team to identify any unmet needs that they’re seeing already in the school year. And I know, one of the things is the increase in enrollment of English Learner students. We are way behind in some areas of paperwork with our ESL department, but we also really do have a need to increase our EL staff right now because the classes are already bursting. We anticipate, as we do every January, that we’ll have a large influx of students after the first of the year.”

In asking for the redesign of the PIC office, Kelley said right now it feels very chopped up and secluded.

“It’s not like a welcoming environment,” she said. “We had talked about making it more of a place where families would come in, sit down at a table with one of the employees and go through all of the paperwork together. We’d like to really get a good chunk of the registration process taken care of in person and have it be more of a customer service kind of program than a drop off papers, isolated environment.”

Kelley said the committee should consider hiring a Director of Social, Emotional and Physical Health and Wellness, Director of Fine Arts and a Director of Academic Technology.

However, these three positions combined would cost $360,000 and when added to the previous asks for the carry forward funding would total $825,000 or $249,495 over the available carry forward funding.

“These are other ‘asks’ that I think are important but the committee can consider whether these things should happen now or maybe in the summer or not at all,” said Kelly. “These three positions come out to another $360,000 which would give us a grand total of $825,000 and would exceed the available carry forward by almost $300,000. So that’s definitely something that the committee is going to need to consider–whether or not those are positions that you want to fund.”

Ways and Means Committee member Carol Tye said she was very much in favor of the first set of spending outlined by Kelley totaling $465,000 as well as hiring a Director of Social, Emotional and Physical Health and Wellness at a cost of $120,000 but was of the opinion that the School Committee should wait to hire a Director of Fine Arts and was on the fence about hiring a Director of Academic Technology.

Ways and Means committee member Fred Sannella said over the years RPS has been accused of being “top heavy with directors” and wondered if this was the right time to add three more.

“We’re trying to save money to cover shortages in the future,” he said. “So I question adding another $360,000. My recommendation would be for the proposal as submitted by the superintendent, with the exception of the three directors.”

The School Committee will vote on what to spend the carry forward money on during their next scheduled meeting.

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