School Budget

In a recent news story, TV-3 has featured what exactly the cuts will do to Westfield's schools and children. The cuts that will be made are as follows:

Westfield Mayor, Daniel Knapik, will be making an appearance on WHYN 560's Brad and Bo Show at 7:15 am tomorrow morning to talk about the cuts proposed by the City Council's Finance Committee and the impact they will have on the school budget and other departments across the city of Westfield. We encourage all residents to listen in and find out how the cuts will affect their quality of life here in Westfield.

Two motions put forward by City Councilor Flaherty, related to the operation of Westfield's schools, were soundly rejected by other City Councilor's Thursday night. As expected, a third motion to cut the school department budget was withdrawn by Flaherty before coming up for debate. Regarding the withdrawn motion, Councilor Flaherty said there was "no need" as a result of "a lot of productive conversations we've had this week."

The agenda for Thursday's meeting is out and it contains a "motion of Councilor Flaherty relative to school budget appropriation." This agenda item appears to be Councilor Flaherty's follow-up to a failed attempt at the last City Council meeting to rescind $744,345 in school budget money that was originally approved back in July.

It's unclear what kind of support Councilor Flaherty has from other City Councilors. City Councilor James Brown, in a response to an email from Save Westfield Schools last weekend, wrote, "I will not be supporting any measure to 'recover the money', as this is not realistic nor a remedy that is available to the Council." Save Westfield Schools encourages other City Councilors to do the same.

Flaherty will also be introducing two additional proposals at Thursday's meeting related to the school budget:

• The first is a request for the City Council's evaluation of a Proposition 2 1/2 override "to fund school department performance-based salary increases in excess of 2 1/2% per year." Last week, in an online forum, Councilor Flaherty wrote, "I'm going to propose a Prop 2 1/2 override that is targeted at providing additional salary money for the school department (to pay for raises that exceed 2.5%)." In another comment he wrote, "I'm not proposing to support the measure, just to have the opportunity to get it on the ballot to give the voters a chance to let their feelings be known in a quantifiable way. I think the measure would fail by a huge margin."
  
  As we have pointed out, Flaherty's suggestion to that teacher salaries should not go above 2.5% is based on his very flawed analysis of how step increases affect the school budget. Other than for grandstanding, we see no value to this proposal whatsoever.
   
• His second proposal is "for approval of resolution to Westfield School Committee relative to negotiating and executing contracts that place further financial burdens on an already stressed school department budget." It's unclear what Councilor Flaherty has in mind here. We will have to wait and see.

We received word from a city official yesterday that the school department will be issuing a report to counter Flaherty's public statements about the school budget. We will post the report here as soon as it is made available to us.

This past weekend, Save Westfield Schools had a lengthy email exchange with Councilor David Flaherty regarding his statements that the new teacher's contract would cost "$8400 per person over the life of this agreement" and cost the city "over $5 million."

After last night's City Council meeting, in an email sent to all Westfield City Councilors, Councilor David Flaherty continued his serious accusations that the school department deceived the City Council and the public. He also implicated the teacher's union in a cover-up over what was in the contract. He wrote, "We got snookered, and the teachers union and the school department have mislead [sic] the public."

Flaherty also explicitly stated his intention to call for a vote to "recover the over $700,000 that the council approved for the school department based on intentionally misleading information provided us." The email contained a photocopy of the Memorandum of Understanding along with his opinion that there were costs negotiated into the contract that were hidden from the public to the tune of "over $5 million." As pointed out earlier by SWS, the WEA made the Memorandum of understanding public on their website since at least August 23rd.

By a unanimous vote, 12-0, the City Council did the right thing and voted to place $744,345 in the budget to offset the money it cut back in June. Several councilor's mentioned the numerous emails they had received on the issue. So great job everyone!

There is much more work to be done, however.  Our schools are not out of the woods yet. We'll be counting on you to stay informed and involved in the process. Please check back here frequently to stay tuned on the latest news. We'll also be sending out periodic emails when there are other interesting developments. So if you haven't already, please sign up for our email updates.

Thanks again!

If you've never sent a message to an elected official in your life, this is a perfect time to get involved because you can make a huge difference in the lives of Westfield's children.

This coming Thursday, the City Council will take a vote on restoring funding to our schools. Tell them you want them to vote "yes" to fund the $744,000 that is on the table and give all of it to the school department. Be sure to tell them to vote on it with no strings attached and no more reckless negotiating tactics.

Click here to learn how to contact the City Councilors. And remember, all thirteen City Councilors will be voting, not just eight.

Although the the teachers accepted deep cuts, we still need the City Council to restore funding to Westfield's schools. We need nine votes to win. If just 5 City Councilors vote no, Shirley Alvira says the budget money will have to be cut because the beginning of the school year is approaching fast. If we lose this vote, it will mean that many of the drastic cuts in services discussed last week will be implemented. Those cut discussed included:

• Laying off all librarians
• Defunding of art and music programs
• Defunding of athletic programs
• Laying off all guidance counselors

So, get your fingers dialing and fire up your email, let's roll out, troops! If you hear from a City Councilor, please contact us so that we can keep tabs on where they stand. Together we can win!

Go right now to learn how to contact the City Councilors!

Again, all thirteen City Councilors will be voting, not just eight.