BURLINGTON — The Burlington School District is focusing on measures to close the achievement gap in its 2020 budget, with new funding for English language teachers, kindergarten paraprofessionals and special education teachers.
The $88.7 million budget, a 4.3 percent increase over the current school year, was approved by the school board in a 9-2 vote Jan. 14. Voters will be considering a 4.8 percent tax increase on March Town Meeting day.
The budget includes $2.3 million in new funding, with the most substantial investments in nine full-time kindergarten paraprofessionals and three full-time special education teachers.
Superintendent Yaw Obeng said the district aimed to uplift its most vulnerable students in allocating resources this year. These groups include elementary students, special education students, students for whom English is their second language and students with social-emotional needs.
“When we’re looking at closing the achievement gap, we have to identify who is in the gap and what we need to do,” he said. “We know while we’re closing the gap, we’re raising the bar for everyone else.”
The budget includes $819,805 in reductions, including $500,000 in non-instructional spending, which includes utilities savings, transportation savings in reducing the use of rented vehicles and substitute teacher savings by using in-house substitutes.
Cuts include an administrative projects coordinator position, a contracted principal substitution position and three behavior coaches, who work with students with behavioral issues.
Obeng said the district looked at its strategic plan and its three main pillars — inclusive teaching and learning, equitable climate and culture and sustainable finance and facilities — when looking at areas to boost funding.
Some of the additions cater to the city’s growing New American community, including a couple of English language teachers and a multilingual liaison.
The budget also represents an investment in early education, with the retention of two all-day preschool classrooms, which had previously been supported by a grant, and the addition of nine kindergarten paraprofessionals and two elementary interventionists.
“One of the things we had been hearing from our teachers and our administrators, specifically, is kindergarten is a place where they need extra hands,” Obeng said. “For many of those kids, it’s the first time in schooling, so to have an extra resource in the classroom with the teacher is beneficial.”
Additionally, the budget further funds the district’s restorative practice efforts by funding a restorative practice coach and additional staff training and consultants.
Obeng said that the district’s restorative practices have been working, as the percentage of black students who are suspended from school has fallen to a percentage below the overall percentage of black students.
“That’s a good sign people are being treated fairly,” he said.
Betsy Nolan, the communication director for the Burlington Education Association, the teachers’ union in the district, said that the union was very pleased with the proposed budget.
“We feel really positively that the new school board and superintendent’s office are working to provide more resources to the boots on the ground to help kids,” she said.
Nolan said that she felt this year’s budget was a shift from the previous school board’s approach in both the process and the final product.
“To see the school board come in and look at things and say, we need to cut some fat at central office and add some teaching positions to met our goals of closing the achievement gap, I think is very refreshing,” she said.
The two school board members who voted against the budget are Stephen Carey and Monika Ivancic. Neither immeditately returned a request for comment from VTDigger.
According to minutes from the meeting, Ivancic wanted more support for elementary schools and expressed uncertainty about the necessity of funding for coaches in the district. The coaches help provide individualized professional development to teachers.
Carey proposed an unsuccessful amendment to the budget which would have added $250,000 for elementary school teachers, paraprofessionals and special educators. He also proposed cutting three coaches at elementary schools and using that funding to instead hire special educators at those schools, a suggestion which also did not pass.
Nolan said the BEA is happy that the district is sticking with the coaching model, which was instituted last year, to evaluate how it works before considering cutting it.
The BEA would ideally like to have a paraprofessional in every kindergarten classroom, Nolan said, as the current plan would leave some classrooms sharing paraprofessionals. But she said the nine new paraprofessionals was a good start.
Obeng said that schools that have two kindergarten classrooms will share a paraprofessional, and the district hopes to move to fund more paraprofessionals next year.
On Town Meeting Day in March, Burlington voters will consider the 4.8 percent tax increase to pay for the new school budget. Voters supported a 7.9 percent tax increase last year, which became only around a 4 percent impact after state funding was finalized.
“Since my time here, the people of Burlington have been very supportive of education and they’ve supported all of our budgets and have gone beyond that and supported our bonds,” Obeng said. “I think they realize that education is critical for society, whether you have children in the system or not, it benefits all of us, and it is an investment we all need to do.”
Voters also overwhelmingly supported a $70 million renovation bond for Burlington High School in November. Obeng said the project is on track and architects hired by the district are designing the renovation.
