But committee members said they were surprised by the requests, which they first learned of at Monday's budget hearings. And neither school committee members nor district administrators have come up with a plan for dealing with the discrepancy.

"I think if we need $450,000, we need to come up with that money," said school committee member Alfred B. Fantini. "We can't dance around it. [The restructuring] has to be successful."

D'Alessandro's proposed $700,000 restructuring funds are currently allocated for capital improvements to the building and teacher training and other items.

But CRLS officials are requesting more. CRLS Principal Paula Evans distributed copies of the additional CRLS requests to school committee members, showing her support for the additional expenditures.

The requests include $130,000 more for training, $100,000 more for renovating and rearranging the physical plant, as well as $66,000 for contingency funds, $50,000 for teachers' voice mail, $27,500 for public outreach efforts and $25,000 for the school opening.

But committee members at Monday's budget hearing said they were surprised to learn of the additional requests. They pressed D'Alessandro at another hearing on Tuesday on the large discrepancy.

D'Alessandro said she knew about the additional request from CRLS. But she said decided to fund only part of the request because of other budget demands in the district.

"We know that they brought forth these requests. They consider them needed," she said.