BY VINAYA SAKSENA

PAWTUCKET — The School Committee will not be sending a proposed budget to the City Council, but will be sending the Council a wants list of sorts, as a result of a vote taken at its meeting Wednesday night.

According to School Committee Chairman David Coughlin Jr., the decision was intended as a way to provide city officials with information on their department’s needs for the 2010 fiscal year in absence of some key information that would help the committee make a more definitive decision on its budget.
Specifically, committee members had noted at Wednesday’s meeting that the amount of funding the department would receive from the city and the state was uncertain.
Thomas Conlon, Business Administrator for the School Department, said the costs the department anticipated for the coming year- as would be indicated in information sent to city officials- were estimated at approximately $102.7 million. That is an increase of approximately 2.87 percent over last year’s figure of approximately $99.8 million, Conlon said.
“Based on historic precedent, we have always (cut) about $4 million,” Conlon said. “So the real number is $106 million. We just don’t know what cuts are going to be made.”
The vote to approve the expense estimate to send to city officials was approved by the committee unanimously. More contentious was a vote to recall several teachers who had received layoff notices. That proposal was approved by a a 4-3 vote, with Coughlin, Clerk Joseph Knight and fellow committee member Raymond Noonan dissenting. Following the meeting, Coughlin said his “no” vote was simply out of concern over the department’s uncertain financial future.
Conlon noted, however, that a “no” vote by the committee as a whole might have been problematic in another way. Specifically, teachers who had been laid off could have begun collecting unemployment insurance if the matter was not resolved by the end of the current fiscal year in June.
Conlon said that the $102.7 million expense figure approved by the School Committee did include the cost of keeping those recalled teachers on staff. How the Committee would resolve any budget shortfall that may arise after the disclosure of aid amounts coming to the School Department from either the city or the State of Rhode Island, however, was uncertain, Conlon said.
The Committee also voted Wednesday to approve the School District’s Strategic Plan. The vote was unanimous among the six committee members present, with Amy Breault Zolt having left earlier in the evening. The committee did not hear a report from an ad hoc committee that had been slated to meet with State Auditor General Ernest Almonte, as the committee had not yet met, according to Committee member Nicole Nordquist.