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Dr. David Hopson |
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March 26 , 2007 The Gateway Regional School District’s school committee and administration has been open and cognizant of the difficult financial circumstances of our communities in developing budgets for the last four years. I also know that the towns have recognized the difficulties the school district has in meeting the myriad state mandates and student needs by approving over-minimum budget amounts for many years. This budget year is currently shaping up to be another difficult one, particularly with the uncertainty surrounding increases in state educational aid and regional transportation reimbursement. As a town moderator and past chair of Blandford’s Board of Assessors, I am aware of the limitations of Proposition 2 ½, the difficulties of passing overrides, and the dependency the towns and school district have upon the state’s largess in supporting our budgets. We are all painfully aware of what happens when the state reduces financial aid and the inordinate amount of time that it takes to recover from such an impact. We still have not replaced all of the Gateway staff that were lost in 2003, yet the state has continued to add requirements that we must meet. As I mentioned in last week’s column, the school committee adopted what they felt was a balanced attempt to meet student needs and minimize town assessments. I know that towns are also now responsible for the vocational tuition of their own students, and would point out that vocational costs are not controlled by either the Gateway District or any individual town—these tuition charges are set by the vocational schools under a generous cap allowed by the state. The towns do get reimbursed part of the cost in the following year by the state and also see a drop in their minimum contributions to Gateway based upon the number of students choosing vocational schools. What I didn’t mention in last week’s column was that the school committee is already contemplating alternative budgets based upon initial state aid figures and the concerns expressed by town officials this winter. The first fallback position is to provide a level-service budget for town ratification, essentially providing the same degree of service that is currently being provided. This budget would not require staff lay-offs or consolidation of schools but would also not provide any of the items deemed essential for improving student performance. The school committee has spent much time discussing this reduced request and has temporarily placed it on hold while waiting to see if the legislators will increase state aid to education. The second fallback position is to move to a level-funded budget plus 3% (which accounts for the 2 ½% increase in taxes and an average amount of new growth in town of .5%). This budget would require cutting a substantial amount of money from the budget currently adopted, laying off a large number of staff, and the consolidation of elementary schools if we are to provide some semblance of a complete education to our students. Cutting this number of staff while keeping all 7 schools open would require skeleton staffing levels in each school, i.e., moving back to multi-aged classes in each school. This is a continuation of the problem of student enrollment mentioned by Al LaFrance. While we have lost 150 students since 2001, spread over a K-12 system and 7 schools this doesn’t amount to any savings in staff over that time period because that’s only averages less than 2 students per grade/per school throughout the district. If we take into consideration the increasing numbers of students requiring special accommodations under the law, we should actually have more staff now than we did in 2001. The reality is that we have fewer staff, more state requirements, higher expectations and a budget that has only increased an average of 2.6% a year for the past 5 years (the same average increase as our seven towns).
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