School Budget Pressures Impact Private Industry
The pressure on local school budgets is no secret. With the state strapped for cash, that's meant less aid for schools. Add in the increasing costs for health insurance and union contracts, and you've got a sticky budget situation.
While the prospect of teacher layoffs and reduced course offerings make headlines, there are an untold number of businesses that also suffer when schools tighten their belts.
Classroom Supplies
Jim Beyer, owner of educational supply outlet ABC Stores in Milford, says his store is definitely affected by shrinking school budgets, and believes more materials are being shared between classrooms.
“Purchase orders are, for the most part, solid, but spread out over more schools,” he said.
Beyer said teachers are only buying essential items, not things like incentive charts to support their curriculum.
“Now they are doing things like using the same bulletin board items two, three years in a row, instead of one,” he said. He notices parents are buying only one book, whereas in the past it might be two or three, to help their child in a certain subject.
“It’s tough right now in the market,” he said.
Cutting Back
“Every year the discretionary spending pie is shrinking,” noted Spencer-East Brookfield Superintendent Ralph Hicks.
The Spencer-East Brookfield school district, in addition to cutting back on books and supplies, was forced to cut a regular bus route for the 2008-2009 school year. This school year, it cut one-and-a-half bus routes with its transportation vendor, Varney’s Garage of East Brookfield. The school district is not alone.
Bonnie Bastian, a spokesperson with Brockton-based First Student, which provides busing to more than 80 Massachusetts school districts, says combining routes is the new trend.
“They’re not cancelling outright,” she said, “but we have seen some trimming, such as extending routes and using fewer buses — it allows them to free up buses they wouldn’t have to use.” Many districts are also charging bus fees in addition to sports fees to get student athletes to practices and games, she said. In states where there is a not a two-mile radius rule — where the school is not required to provide transportation to certain grades inside that area — many districts are opting not to, due to budget concerns, Bastian said.
“Of course safety is the first priority, but where they can, they cut back,” she said.
Back In Time
The cost of buses doesn’t just impact the local bus contracts. When times are tight, many school districts dial back on field trips to save money on transportation, according Alexis Conte, director of sales for Old Sturbridge Village.
OSV has seen a 5 to 6 percent increase in field trip bookings and is trending up slightly into 2010-2011, “but many schools can fund only a self-guided visit,” she said, as opposed to hands-on studios held in the village, where students can do an 1830s historic craft, for example. OSV also offers another option, “History on the Road,” where costumed interpreters visit schools in character. “The transportation fees can be extravagant,” Conte said. “With ‘History on the Road’ they don’t have to worry about that, we come to them.”
Hicks, the Spencer-East Brookfield school superintendent, said field trips fell victim to money woes about seven years ago.
“But thanks to the PTO, we still make it happen,” he said.
Community Support
School districts are doing more with less out of necessity, relying on foundations, PTOs and partnerships to make sure students get as close to all the cultural attractions that they did in the past. Somehow, it’s getting done. But that doesn’t make it acceptable, especially to arts advocates.
“I don’t want to send a message to the state that it’s OK to cut funding for the arts,” said Troy Siebels, executive director of the Hanover Theatre in Worcester. “It’s critical. And if we can find a way to work with the schools, we will.”
Siebels says schools are still doing field trips — such as the Hanover’s student matinee for The Nutcracker, where more than 8,000 kids are expected this month — they are just not paying for them. He said the Hanover reaches out to various foundations to discount tickets from $45 to $15 for students and families.
“If we didn’t discount, I’m sure we wouldn’t see anyone come,” he said. The holiday matinee crowd is up from last year’s 6,500 attendees, Siebels said. But that growth has more to do with the relatively new theater stepping up marketing in places like Southern New Hampshire, he said, than an influx of school funds.
The Ecotarium, another Worcester-based field trip locale, has modified its offerings to better serve schools and stem the tide of decreasing profits, according to Stephen Pitcher, president of the facility.
“I’d say we’ve seen a slight decline in school trips over the past school year — 5 percent or so,” he said. But this follows a more significant drop in the 2005-2006 school year, he said, after which the Ecotarium reached out to schools to boost field trip attendance.
Surviving in a tough economy is all about partnerships, said Pitcher, explaining that his staff “had to be more proactive and deal directly with the school department.” The Ecotarium switched gears, reached out, and patterned its programming on the Worcester Public Schools STEM curriculum requirements, investing $750,000 in a new digital planetarium in 2007. It also pushed its marketing efforts into overdrive.
“It was a case of, if we build it, they will come, but we have to tell them we built it,” Pitcher said.
So far, so good. The planetarium drew more than 8,500 students in 2008, compared with 3,800 students in 2006. Like the Hanover, the Ecotarium also relies on foundations.
Pitcher says it means they are inconsistent in what they are able to offer depending on the time of year and funders’ circumstances. In an effort to further compete, the Ecotarium offers discounted admission in the field trip “off season” months of early fall and winter.
Susan Shalhoub is a freelance writer based in Dudley. She can be reached at sshalhoub@gmail.com.
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