The details of reorganizing Wareham’s elementary schools were the main topics of discussion for the first meeting of the Reconfiguration Committee on Feb. 6. However, Wareham Public Schools Superintendent Kimberly Shaver-Hood, parents and teachers began with budget talk.

In December, Town Administrator Derek Sullivan made an agreement with the state Department of Revenue that the town would work to cut its current year expenses by $500,000 by June 30. In return, the state certified the town's tax rate, allowing tax bills to go out on time.

Thus far, Sullivan has found about $250,000 in non-school budget cuts.

“Very shortly, at the next School Committee meeting, we will be sharing where the school will be getting their $250,000 from this year’s budget, which we don’t have by the way because we overspent our budget last year by the tune of about $400,000,” said Shaver-Hood. “So, that had to come out of this year’s budget.”

Shaver-Hood would not elaborate on the topic. She then moved to talk about the 2015 budget.

“When we came to the town with our budget, and they put the town budget together, we were over $3 million apart between the anticipated revenue and what we needed,” said Shaver-Hood. “So, the schools went back, and we cut our budget to $27 million, and came up with our reconfiguration plan.”

“Since then, we’ve been told we have another $1.4 million we need to cut out of our school budget,” Shaver-Hood said. “Keeping teachers, keeping staff is our priority."

One parent asked how the budget issues got to this point, and Shaver-Hood attributed it to raising fixed costs – especially healthcare.

From there, the focus switched to the reconfiguration of Wareham's elementary schools.

As it stands, students enrolled in pre-K, kindergarten, and first grade will attend Minot Forest Elementary while students enrolled in second, third and fourth grades will attend Decas Elementary.

Another parent expressed concerns with busing kids across town, and Shaver-Hood said that she placed a higher value on keeping class sizes down.

“If we didn’t make some of these changes, you would have been looking at 30 plus kids in a classroom,” Shaver-Hood said. “We are fiercely guarding class sizes.”

However, Shaver-Hood put where each grade would go up for debate.

“It very well may be that we will be making some adjustments where [Decas Elementary] would be the K, 1, 2 building,” Shaver-Hood said.

Immediately, Shaver-Hood was applauded.

“Minot would be pre-K, 3, 4,” Shaver-Hood added. “You might say to yourself, ‘why would we spilt pre-K and K?’ We don’t have enough classrooms in Minot to make pre-K, K, 1, and 2 work.”

“If we had to make a decision today, we would probably change some of the split.”

Shaver-Hood wants things to be set in stone by March 1. For Shaver-Hood, this reconfiguration is a creative way to cut the budget without having to cut teachers.

“We will not balance the budget on the backs of teachers,” Shaver-Hood said.

“We have a program to build. We have a community to put back together. We have schools that, you know what, we’re on the move. We’re going to continue to get better,” Shaver-Hood said. “I want all of us to work together because if we don’t, we’re not going any place.”