It’s been approved by the School Committee and finalized by the Westbrook City Council, and next week Westbrook residents will vote on the School Department budget. The validation referendum, on Tuesday, June 9, will be on only the school’s portion of the budget and not the municipal portion.

The development of the school budget begins long before the City Council acts on it. The seven schools and various other departments deliberate and submit their budgets to the superintendent of schools and Central Office before the Christmas holidays. Once the budget is compiled, the superintendent and the School Department’s business manager review every line in it with the appropriate supervisor, checking for accuracy and relevance, and assuring that each request is necessary and appropriate. Since this has been the process for the last 10 years, the principals and directors know to submit only the necessities for keeping the quality of education Westbrook citizens have been accustomed to expect.

Our goal is to have as lean a budget as possible, and this year, it was made clear to all school employees that we had to be particularly scrutinizing. We aimed to bring in a budget as close to a zero-percent increase to taxpayers as possible.

Meanwhile, we are experiencing the same constraints that our taxpayers are facing: rising costs of food, oil and propane for our buildings, diesel fuel for our buses, electricity, liability and fire insurance, and other insurance.

As the superintendent of schools, I am always mindful of my awesome responsibility to present as frugal a budget to the citizens as possible. I take this financial stewardship very seriously. I pride myself in having the necessary skills and vision to look beyond the immediate present and see trends that may occur in the next several years. In other words, we have been preparing for this turndown in the economy.

Since our student population has been declining gradually these last several years, action has taken place annually in two significant areas:

• As teachers and support staff have retired or left Westbrook, we have assessed each position to determine if it is still necessary. Through the past few years, dozens of positions have been eliminated, representing significant savings and allowing us to place the necessary money into the classrooms to benefit the students. During the budget process this year, the School Committee eliminated 10 staff and cut numerous items from the budget, resulting in a budget decrease of $976,105.

• Another important step the School Department has taken is to merge various departments with the city of Westbrook and surrounding schools. Westbrook schools have merged the technology, cable television, maintenance and custodial departments with the city. The school provides and manages these services for the city. The city provides the management of the Davan Pool, maintenance and care of the athletic fields, mowing of the lawns and fields, our school resource officer and some repairs and improvements to our grounds and sidewalks . These arrangements have resulted in significant savings to the taxpayers.

The Westbrook schools, through cooperation with the Sebago Alliance (six other schools in the area), founded and co-sponsored a day treatment program for special education, received grants and are involved in some joint purchases and some professional development for teachers and staff. In addition, even though a complete merger did not materialize, we have combined our food service program with Windham’s for two school years and are exploring combining transportation departments. These changes will save us additional money.

For the coming school year, the city and schools in Westbrook will share the services of our human resources department. We are also actively discussing combing the financial operations of both departments in an attempt to save additional money. Merging payroll departments, financial departments and other combinations of departments could save some serious money.

With all this being said, the Westbrook School Department is pleased to present only a slight increase to the taxpayers in city allocation for the 2009-10 school year: $6,665. This despite $678,304 of new local debt on the middle school. We were able to do this by making cuts in other parts of the budget.

This amount of money represents a slight increase in taxes on the school’s side (.0426 percent) to the locals. Our overall budget request is $32,988,494.

In preparing this article and a presentation to the City Council, we conducted a five-year history of the School Department requests of city allocation. The results – additional money sought from the city, and the percentage of the increase – are as follows:

2009-10 – $6,665 (.0426)

2008-09 – $213,848 (1.39)

2007-08 – $475,782 (3.19)

2006-07 – $402,693 (2.77)

2005-06 – ($-871,434) (-5.66)

As you can see, over the last five years our increase to the local allocation (the amount raised by the city for schools) has gone up by $227,555, an average increase of $45,510 per year or 0.3469 percent per year. This means that the Essentials Programs and Services funding model has worked for Westbrook. The Essential Programs and Services funding model was to keep local taxes for schools at a minimum.

Please take some time to learn as much as you can about the 2009-10 budget and the budget validation referendum. Both City Clerk Lynda Adams and I will be on Mayor Bruce Chuluda’s call-in show on June 4 at 6:30 p.m. to discuss the budget and referendum.

The June 9 vote is your opportunity to have input on the school department budget. As you prepare to vote, please contact Westbrook School Committee members or me if you have any questions.

Stan Sawyer is the superintendent of Westbrook schools.