Additional State Funding Bolsters McCann FY 2023 Budget
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — With the addition of nearly $1 million in extra Chapter 70 education funding, the fiscal 2023 budget for McCann Technical School is $10,656,491, a $347,602 increase from last year.
"This allows us to do what we're doing and keep moving forward," said McCann Superintendent James Brosnan. "That's a critical thing. So it's a very safe budget to take care of what we do."
The McCann School Committee approved the proposed budget on Thursday. Brosnan said, as far as line items are concerned, not much has changed with this budget compared to last year.
"To those veterans [of the committee] who have been around, this is another vanilla budget," he said.
The most significant change to the budget is an 18 percent increase in Chapter 70 general school aid. The school received $6,273,595 in Chapter 70 funding from the state, a $957,454 increase from FY 2022.
The increase in state funding, according to Brosnan, allowed the school to lower several expenses, including the cost member communities have to contribute to the school.
"We've been able to lower what we're looking for from our member communities in terms of monies," Brosnan said.
Because of the extra state funding, the budgeted amount tuition decreased to $321,218 for FY 2023, $424,810 less than last year, and the budgeted municipal assessment is $102,600, a $404,437 decrease from FY 2022.
"So fiscally, for our communities and ourselves, it's a good step," Brosnan said.
As part of the budget process, the committee also approved the $482,015 transportation bid from Dufour Transportation. Committee member Daniel Maloney Jr. spoke highly of Dufour's work with the school in the past.
"Certainly a first-class company that does everything that they are supposed to and then some," he said. "Through the pandemic, with shifts in students coming and going, they were very very accommodating, certainly, for everything."
The budget also includes funding for an additional special education teacher, a position the school plans to fill before the beginning of the next school year. Brosnan said the money for the job comes from the state Student Opportunities Act.
"I have a Student Opportunities Act plan that we submitted last year," he said. "And we added English and we added science, math, we added health and physical education. This year, we're going forward, we're retaining those, and we're adding the special education instructor."
Maloney Jr. said the FY 2023 budget allows McCann to continue what it has been doing and work to improve the school as a whole.
"It really keeps us moving forward," he said, "Not leaps forward, but it catches up with some things that we needed to do. There has been a lot done in the building as far as rehabs and trying to get all the classrooms taken care of."
Tags: fiscal 2023, McCann, school budget,
