I wanted to do a brief blog about the East Bridgewater Board of Selectmen meeting tonight since the story won’t appear until Friday’s paper.

This is the best picture I could get from the meeting, I was squeezed in between Chief Cowan and Jeff Luttazzi from the Finance Committee.

The School Committee came before the board Tuesday night to present their budget.  School Business Administrator Ralph Dumas and Nancy Miller, who is in charge of special education for the district, did a nice job explaining the budget clearly and answering questions from the selectmen.

The School Committee has been working with two different budgets, one at a 5.99 percent over last year’s numbers that cuts a number of teachers aides (I can’t remember exactly how many), and one at a 3 percent increase (asked for by the Finance Committee and Board of Selectmen) that cuts seven teachers and 12 teachers’ aides.  Both budgets, as currently constituted, would only provided busing for the students mandated by law, that is students in grades K-6 who live two or more miles from their schools.

Things were going fairly smoothly until Selectmen David Walsh suggested that the town may be able to make up the difference in funds for the busing if school officials go out to bid for the current level of services, rather than the reduced number.  This prompted an angry response from parents in attendance (it was a full room) as well as School Committee members, who asked if the town could find the money for buses, why not the money for teachers?  Walsh noted that the details of the issue hadn’t been worked out, and School Committee member Tom Hamilton cautioned that the matter would have to be discussed at his board’s meeting on Thursday night.  But committee member Nancy Smith felt like the issue was already decided.

“We don’t really have a role in the budget … basically you’ve taken our job away from us,” she said. “It’s just another clear message that education is not the priority.”

Strong words on a very volatile issue.  Busing has been the buzzword around town for weeks now, and there will have to be much more discussion before the issue is solved.  I for one am glad that the issue is being hashed out in public, so that the citizens of East Bridgewater have a chance to comment and have their voices heard.  There are a lot of smart people in town, on the Board of Selectmen as well as the Finance Committee and School Committee (and the non-elected members of the school department as well, of course.)  I have a lot of faith that we’ll figure this all out in the best interests of both the school children and the community’s financial health.  In the meantime, feel free to discuss the issue over in our forums.  I’ll try to get the story from Thursday’s meeting posted on the Web site on Friday.