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I listened to City Manager Bernie Lynch on WUML this morning, talking about the budget. He and Bob Ellis seemed to dispute the way “one school committee member” (and we know who that is) is describing the city’s proposed 8% reduction in school funding.

It’s the same old story. The state gives Lowell a lot of money for education (more than 85% of the school budget is state-funded and in past years it has been closer to 90%) and it is difficult to just let that money go to the schools.  Instead of looking at the city’s year-over-year contribution, which will be 8% (7.6 to be precise) less under the Manager’s proposal, Bob and Bernie are saying that the school budget is increasing, so it’s okay to cut the city’s contribution. 

The state legislators worked hard to make education a priority in their budget and in light of those increases, the schools did not ask for an increase in the city’s 2006 contribution of $21 million. The proposed reduction of $1.6 million represents a 7.6% decrease in the city’s contribution. Other city departments are not being asked to take cuts of that magnitude.

It’s important to realize that the city has an obligation to pay its fair share toward education. We already get at least 85% of our funding from the state, but that should not be seen as permission to keep reducing local funding for our schools (see Jackie’s post below for a breakdown of the numbers, but the city is now paying about $5 million less toward the schools than it did in 1992).  Basically, what the Manager is doing is taking away from the amount that the State allocated for education in Lowell. As I said, the legislators made a statement with their budget, that education is a priority in Massachusetts; what Bernie Lynch is saying with his budget is that it is not a priority in Lowell.