Random thoughts on the budget

The budget process in Lowell seems to me to be extremely complex. First there is a kind of three-way dance going on between the union, the school committee and the city council. As I've said before, it is usually the schools that lose out in this battle of wits and stamina. The union wants the school committee to get as much money as possible for the schools so that it can be channeled into teacher raises and benefits. The city doesn't want to fund these, so withholds as much money as possible from the schools. The school committee is in the hard position of trying to avoid lay-offs as well as strikes and to keep the schools funded. Meanwhile, we are losing library, science and music teachers at the elementary level, with no possibility of recovering these lost positions.

Over all this is the added layer of the State funding piece. In Lowell, we get 84% of our budget from the State in the form of local aid, called Chapter 70 (this is down from 89% by the way). Since we don't know how much Ch. 70 money we will be getting, the budgeting process, which is currently underway along with contract negotiations, is extremely difficult.