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Dr. David Hopson |
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April 30, 2007 It’s that time of the year again when the annual rite of passing a budget is in full bloom. As you may be aware, the school committee reduced its original budget request by nearly $250,000 on April 11th, returning us to what is essentially a level service budget for next year. At an all towns meeting on April 19th, town finance committee and selectboard members provided an overview of town finances and the need for the school committee to further reduce town assessments. Some towns are currently either not supporting the district’s budget or making its passage contingent on a Proposition 2 ½ override, something that doesn’t often succeed in our seven towns. Everyone at the all towns meeting agreed that the problem wasn’t the school’s fault, but rather a lack of state support and understanding for the unique challenges rural schools face. It was heartening to hear that town officials had written to legislators and the governor to support the R.E.D. (Rural Education with Declining Enrollment) circuit breaker for rural districts and that they were planning to continue to exert additional pressure to get the state to make changes in educational aid. I would urge community members to do the same. There was discussion surrounding further reductions in town assessments but the general consensus was that the next logical step to reach that level without massive layoffs and disruptions to the educational process was to consolidate elementary schools by closing Blandford Elementary, Conwell Elementary, and Russell Elementary Schools. This has also been a much-discussed topic at school committee meetings. At our April 25th school committee meeting, the committee was unable to adopt this fallback budget due to an insufficient number of members attending the meeting. You can image the difficulties and angst involved in discussing this issue in light of school choice, past experiences in closing schools, and prior actions taken by the towns (i.e., voting to construct/renovate 5 rather than 2 elementary schools knowing that this would require additional costs over time). As you can see from the budget information posted on our website (www.grsd.org), it is much less detrimental to K-12 student services to consolidate schools than in any other scenario that reduces the overall budget by a comparable amount. The hidden skeleton in the closet is the timing of the town votes and the expediency in which new votes can be taken to ratify the budget. As you’re aware, not having a budget in place by July 1st puts us in the precarious situation of reverting to a 1/12th budget (a further reduction of over $650,000 would then be required to balance income and expenses). The town officials agreed to expedite the budget ratification process by adjourning May town meetings for a short period of time (less than a month) allowing the school committee to quickly provide new assessment figures. It appears that with town support, and the potential consolidation of elementary schools, we should have a budget (either version 2.0 or 3.0) in a timely fashion so that we can avoid the additional added expense related to unemployment costs. I hope that you review the budget choices facing the district, weigh the pros and cons of the adopted and potential budgets, and participate in this year’s annual town meeting. This year’s budget choices are difficult, involving emotions, tax assessments, and reason in deciding to support the current budget request (Version 2.0—level service with 5 elementary schools) verses the fallback budget (Version 3.0 which closes Blandford, Russell, and R. H. Conwell Elementary Schools). Ideally we would get version 2.0 adopted so that we could initiate discussion with all constituencies regarding future directions for the district and the options surrounding our elementary schools. ### |
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