To begin the annual Andover School District Meeting on March 2, Moderator Betsy Paine introduced the Andover School Board members, Andover Budget committee members, SAU #46 officials, and AE/MS administration in attendance. The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts led the meeting in the Pledge of Allegiance, and the AE/MS Chorus sang God Bless America.

Betsy recognized Don Gould, who retired from the School Board last year, by reading the tribute to him that appeared in the Andover Town Report for 2014. The audience stood for a round of applause. (Two weeks later, Don passed away at Peabody Home in Franklin. His obituary appears on page ??.)

Betsy read the rules for the meeting, then turned the audience’s attention to Article 1.

Article 1: To accept the reports printed in the School District report. With no discussion, the article passed unanimously.

Article 2: To authorize the School Board to use state and federal aid this year. With no discussion, the article passed unanimously.

Article 3: To authorize the School Board to use private donations this year. With no discussion, the article passed unanimously.

Article 4: $4,729,465 for the school budget, as recommended by the School Board and the Andover Budget Committee.

Budget Committee chairman Arch Weathers explained the two formats of the budget presented in both the handout and in the Town Report. One format is the way that state law requires the budget to be presented, which is very detailed and is not organized for easy understanding. The other is the Budget Committee’s format, which presents the same figures but divides them across fewer categories and organizes the categories for easy understanding.

Arch went on to explain the role of the Budget Committee and the School Board in recommending the budget.

Leighton Terwilliger: Why aren’t we going through the budget section-by-section? And why is transportation up $60,000?

Moderator: There’s no legal requirement to go through the budget line-by-line. If the will of the meeting is to go through it line-by-line, I can accept a motion to do that, and we can vote on the motion.

School Board chair Michelle Dudek: This year was the last year of the old transportation contract, so we had to re-negotiate a new contract, and those are the numbers you see in the budget. It includes special-education transportation as well as regular transportation.

Vicky Mishcon: What reason is the company giving for the increase in cost?

SAU Superintendent Mark MacLean: We, too, were a little taken aback by the numbers. We put a bid out and had two different vendors return bids on the RFP. We were able to go back to the vendors and get the numbers down a little bit further.

Initially, we were requesting a fleet of brand-new buses, and when we saw those numbers…. The reason they gave us for the increase is that busing is more expensive. They have union contracts that they’re negotiating. They use long-term averages in their determination of fuel prices.

We went back and discussed the fleet with the vendors and got the price down about $30,000. We had a lot of due diligence on this one and pushed back as much as we could.

In a smaller community like Andover, with only two vendors returning bids, there wasn’t a whole lot of competition, but with that said, we really did enter into a lot of negotiation with the two companies.

Wood Sutton: I have a question on special education, which is sort of the elephant in the room. By my figures, it’s about $750,000, roughly half of it spent in-house and the other half outside. I’m not questioning the need for special education, but is there any light at the end of the tunnel for bringing these expenses down, and are there opportunities for bringing more of it in-house instead of sending it out to wherever it goes?

Mark MacLean: We’re required by law to provide a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment possible. Some of the services we’re required to provide are so out-of-the-ordinary that to bring those in locally would be cost-prohibitive. A lot of times, transportation is a big part of that.

You’re going to see that, even with an enrollment that’s stable, doctors are getting better at identifying, there are more and more kids in the system, there are more and more identified needs, so….

That special education dollar was supposed to be 44% federally funded. At this point I think it’s 17% federally funded, and the taxpayers do have to make up the difference.

Special Education Coordinator Judith Turk: Another point is that we are legally obligated to provide services for children starting at age three, up to age 21. We have studies that show that early intervention is key to lowering these numbers as the students go on. We also have students heavily involved after high school who need further services.

We have students with speech needs, occupational therapy needs, physical therapy needs, social and emotional needs. We have to do testing, we have to provide counseling services. It is a team process, and we have a team of specialists from whom we have to solicit services. It is a very complex system, and that is why it adds up, according to the needs of the student.

Richard Brewster: What percentage of the total student population is receiving special education services?

School Board member Misty Sava: 16% of our 289 students.

Leighton Terwilliger: What did we get out of the $50,000 for building improvements that we spent last year?

Mark MacLean: We’re going to present about the building study later on.

Seeing no further discussion, the moderator called for a vote and Article 4 passed unanimously. A motion to limit reconsideration of Article 4 passed unanimously.

Article 5: $25,000 from surplus to be placed in the Regular Education High School Tuition Expendable Trust Fund.

Jim Danforth: Do we have a formulation for how we’re going to fund this? This was originally proposed as a means to mitigate the cost of high school tuition as more kids went in. We were promised a formula several years ago.

SAU Business Administrator Robin Heins: The Budget Committee has set a goal of $100,000 in this account so you won’t see the ups and downs in the budget as the number of Andover students at MVHS goes up and down.

By [passing Article 5], that will bring it up to about $76,000. Next year, we’re expecting fewer kids to go to MVHS, so that’s why you see that tuition line is down.

With no further discussion, Article 5 passed unanimously.

Article 6: $10,000 from surplus to be added to the Special Education Expendable Trust Fund. With no discussion, the article passed unanimously.

Article 7: $10,000 from surplus for the purpose of a Transportation Study.

Budget Committee chair Arch Weathers: When the School Board told us that the first year of the new transportation contract would be up 30% over the last year of the previous contract, we were taken aback. It was clear that if we didn’t study some options, this would become one of those costs that we couldn’t control. So this plan is hopefully going to give us some more choices and hopefully give us back some control.

Bus companies are becoming regionalized and have a lot of clout, so when you go to the negotiating table, they pretty much can call the shots. That is not going to translate well for Andover.

So this plan is to study some alternatives and come back next year with some options. One alternative being considered is that we may wind up operating our own fleet. We might lease the buses, buy them outright, form a cooperative with other districts…. There are a lot of creative alternatives that this committee is going to be looking at.

Richard Brewster: Who will do the study?

Mark MacLean: We’ve connected with PJ Abbott, who has about 40 years of experience in the transportation field, both on the private side with First Student and on the district-run side.

Leighton Terwilliger: We used to have a contract with a provider in our town who ran our buses.

With no further discussion, Article 7 passed unanimously.

Article 8: Any other business.

Leighton Terwilliger: Last year I asked Mark MacLean to bring our Andover school and Merrimack Valley High School together a little bit better, so kids here could get more familiar with MVHS.

I want to applaud him on doing that; I’ve seen a lot of good improvements. I’ve seen kids go down there to watch football games, participate in sports, and music, and everything else. Please, please continue this.

The audience responded with a round of applause.

School Board vice-chair Anne Swayze spoke briefly about the facilities study that the School Board undertook last year and asked the public to join a task force that will study in the coming months how best to implement the study’s recommendations. [See the article on page ??.]

Budget Committee member Mary Anne Levesque: This year working with the Budget Committee we went back and forth with the School Board many, many times by e-mail, phone, and in person trying to hammer out the best agreement that could help everybody in town. We had open meetings, expecting to have public input. Unfortunately, it was little at best.

I have been on the Budget Committee for three years, and I have learned an awful lot of what goes on, and the hard work and dedication that the School Board puts in, the Budget Committee puts in, the Town puts in. Everybody just works so hard, you just wouldn’t believe what’s involved.

Everyone should be very, very proud of them for the work everyone does for the town, all on a volunteer basis. They spend hours upon hours.

The audience responded with a big round of applause.