Last month, the School Committee opted to save Newton Community Education from shutting down, for now at least, while the organization turns its finances around.
And Newton Community Education has made some progress in that turnaround.
Assistant Superintendent Liam Hurley met with the School Committee Monday night with a progress report on NCE and had some good news.
“They’ve already started to reduce staffing, so they’re going to be down to 5.4 FTE [full-time employees] by mid-January,” Hurley said.
NCE has eliminated a part-time executive assistant position and will do the same with its director of finance and administration position on Jan. 15. And two program coordinator positions have been changed to 10-month positions, saving NCE two months of payroll for that job.
Combined, the staff reductions are set to save NCE $166,000 a year.
And NCE just about reached its November revenue goal of $133,780 (they ended the month with $133,851. It’s on track to reach the December revenue goal of $112,000.
Hurley said he put $500,000 approved by the School Committee to help NCE into a reserve account to offset shortages while NCE rebuilds its finances and programming.
NCE Director Kate Carpenter Bernier, who has been implementing a turnaround effort for NCE since she started last year, said she’s also looking into getting a new credit card company to handle NCE’s purchasing for lower fees. And, she cautioned, staff and programming savings are measured annually so they won’t be realized immediately.
“The current budget, which has projections for revenue that are very conservative based on the last few years, is now in line with our expenditures,” Carpenter Bernier said. “And so we’re looking at a balanced budget with reductions that we’ve made right now, assuming that the revenue is going to be in keeping with 2023 and 2024.”
And revenues are on track to keep with those years, she added.
Complicating things is the fact that often revenues and expenses materialize at different times, often transcending fiscal years (fiscal years start on July 1). A summer class might get some sign-ups early, and then staff has to wait to see how many more people sign up for that class before getting a full understanding of how much revenue is available from that program.
Meanwhile, Mayor Ruthanne Fuller explained, the staff has to find an instructor, which is an expense, before those revenues come in.
“You end up saying, ‘Oh my gosh, the instructor is going to cost X, and we only have five people sign up,” Fuller said. “’We’re going to have to refund the five and not run the class, because we’re going to lose money on it.’”
Or the class is held anyway, at a loss, because it’s an introductory class for other classes that are popular.
“It’s a Rubik’s Cube,” Fuller mused.
Carpenter Bernier said that revenues tend to be steady for adult and kids’ summer programs, and a 20-to-30 percent drop rate of programming is common.
“You’re trying different things constantly, and then you have the tried-and-true at the same times,” Carpenter Bernier said. “And some things pick up in different seasons, and some things don’t. But on average, the system very much supports or endures forced cancellations.”
Some programming coming to NCE that may help boost revenues are:
A driving school.
A meditation class, which was part of NCE before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Vacation and holiday sports clinics.
Launched in the early 1990s, NCE provides learning and enrichment programs to about 3,500 people and operates with an enterprise fund within Newton Public Schools.
In recent years, new requirements to pay for not just employee salaries but also employee benefits and pensions as well as custodial services has put NCE in a financial bind, which was made exponentially worse by the COVID-19 pandemic.
As part of the agreement with the School Committee for help keeping NCE afloat for the remainder of the fiscal year, Hurley and Carpenter Bernier will meet with the School Committee on a monthly basis to update the committee and community on progress toward long-term financial sustainability.