School Committee Approves Budget Without Amending

Members of the Cambridge School Committee passed many sections of next year's schools budget without amendment last Thursday night, although several school committee members expressed misgivings about the package in a debate that lasted almost six hours.

Along with the budget's financial terms, the committee approved eight broad measures that, for the most part, reinforce existing policies on class size and the development of district-wide standardized curriculum.

The policy measures and financial provisions were passed almost unanimously, with just minor wording adjustments to the budget proposed by Superintendent of Schools Bobbie J. D'Alessandro.

The committee left money for the restructuring of the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS) untouched.

At a hearing last Monday, CRLS Principal Paula Evans presented committee members with requests for an additional $450,000 for teacher training and building renovations. But filling Evans' requests would have meant cutting money from elsewhere in the budget. The budget already allocated $700,000 for the restructuring.

Despite CRLS' requests, committee members sought to pass the budget without extended debate or significant amendments.

"I'm going to support the process that's been established," said committee member Joseph G. Grassi, who said he still objected to many specifics.

"Please stay on this course," he told committee members. "Don't let it unravel and become the cookie jar it once was."

But committee member Susana M. Segat said she didn't like many points in D'Alessandro's plan.

"This budget does not get my vote of confidence," said Segat, who objected to cuts in home economics at the high school and said not enough money had been allocated to special education. "We're going to be caught unaware on a number of points."

While many financial provisions were passed without discussion, the committee talked about a few provisions concerning CRLS reform at more length.

One particularly intense debate focused on Evans' plan to drop home economics classes as part of a broader school reform that will even out the size of the current "houses" and standardize their teaching styles.

Segat objected to the cut, saying the home economics classes were among the most popular at CRLS.

Other committee members said they regretted cutting popular classes but felt it was more important to give Evans a free hand in restructuring the high school.

"We made a promise to the school council," said committee member Nancy Walser of the CRLS parent and teacher association. "They would support the restructuring. One of the caveats was that we would let them determine their own budget."

The home economics provision was passed unchanged, and the committee for the most part avoided heated debates like that one.

Committee member Alfred B. Fantini--who at one point moved to approve the entire budget wholesale, in a motion that wasn't seconded--said he wanted to avoid public budget disputes like the one over home economics.

"This is pitting school committee member against school committee member," he said during that debate. "It is very unhealthy to the process."

D'Alessandro has prided herself on hashing out budget disputes among her own staff before the proposals go public.

"It used to be sort of a kicking and screaming process," she said in an interview before the budget was introduced last week. She said she hoped to go before the school committee and say, "We've flailed through these things and here's our budget."

From the time she first presented the budget two weeks ago up to last week's voting, D'Alessandro quietly rearranged the budget based on school committee members' comments in several days of budget hearings. During the hearings, committee members had been more vocal about their objections to specific budget items.

Thursday night, for example, she restored more than $100,000 to pay administrators in the special education department. She had originally proposed cutting several positions from full- to part-time but faced intense questioning about the cuts at a hearing last Tuesday.