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Date: 3/31/2021
EASTHAMPTON – The Easthampton School Committee unanimously approved the proposed $17.1 million budget for fiscal year 2022 (FY22) during a public hearing on March 23.
Dayle Doiron, the district’s business manager, explained during the meeting how most of the six budget sections in the budget were reduced compared to the prior year’s budget. The only budgets that increased minimally between those two years were the Maple Elementary School budget and the White Brook Middle School budget.
Special education featured the largest decrease in budget. The reason for this, according to Doiron, is because the district is moving some of the expenditures from the operating budget to either the Choice Reserve Fund or the Pandemic Relief Federal Grant Fund.
“We’re not spending any less money, we’re just shifting where the money is coming from,” said Doiron, with regard to where special education money is going.
“The proposed operating budget is a level staffing budget,” said Doiron, who added that the district was expecting enrollment from one extra student for FY21. “There’s no additional staffing budgeted for next year as compared to this year, and there is no reduction in staffing positions in FY21 as compared to FY20.”
The district was able to cut 2.5 percent of funding overall in the FY21 budget without reducing staffing, according to Doiron. “The 2.5 percent reduction was $438,042,” said Doiron. “The overall reduction of the FY20 budget in order to meet the 2.5 percent reduction is just under $480,0000.”
To be able to cut those lines, the district is either shifting to the Choice Reserve or the Pandemic Relief Federal Grant for a little under $480,000 worth of total expenditures. The grant, for example, will specifically allow summer programs to help students catch up after the pandemic.
“Six years ago, there was no reserve, and that’s a really bad place for a school district to be in,” said Doiron. “We’ve been very thoughtfully building it because you want some reserve to fall back on if there’s a rainy day. And if we’ve ever had a rainy day, or year I would say, this was it, and next year’s budget situation puts it squarely in that category.”
The Choice Reserve gives the district an opportunity to offset some of the operational budget every year. The district has been building this fund for the past five years.
Doiron added that the FY23 budget may not be as “dramatic” when illustrating operational savings because the FY22 already shows the extent in which they have saved.
Marin Goldstein, the head of the finance subcommittee for the district, spoke about technology costs, and how the district needs to be careful with the budgeting going forward because technology in schools usually have a cycle where they stop working after five years. This is something that will most likely need to be addressed two to three years from now, according to Goldstein.
“We’re going to have to be really careful to pay attention to that life cycling of computer ware, and timing of that,” said Goldstein.
The district did not collect any fees this year given the state of the economy and the state of household budgets during the pandemic, according to Doiron. “Because we didn’t [collect fees], we want to reinstate them and collect them before we use them again,” she said.
According to Doiron, the Massachusetts Department of Education estimates that the Easthampton school district will bring in about $850,000 from choice revenue in FY21.
“We feel confident that the revenue that comes in this year will be enough to at least match what we contribute on an annual basis in the vicinity of 6 or $750[,000], so that we’re not creating a funding hole for FY23” said Doiron.
Goldstein added that the district has already looked at projections carefully for FY23 to see where they can budget in certain areas. Almost all of the savings this year are being absorbed from the new Mountain View School that is currently being built in place of White Brook Middle School, which means there will most likely be no additional savings for next year when students move into the new school to weather another decrease in the budget.
What this means is, the projected savings from the new school building allow the district to have an operational budget that can function without staffing or services cuts. In a future year, however, the district will not be able to see any additional staffing or services as a result of savings from the new building. The savings from the building will only allow them to weather the 2.5 percent budget decrease.
“We certainly cannot continue or be able to absorb another loss like this going forward in the future years, or there will be a much different conversation to be had at that point,” said Goldstein, with regard to the 2.5 percent decrease. “If this budget continued to be decreased in future years, we’ll be in much dire straits.”
The district can use the choice funding they do not spend this year on operational costs for next year, which will help them get out of the 2.5 percent deficit.
“If we had spent all of this year’s choice money as we had planned, we would not be able to be proposing this budget,” said Goldstein. “That is a part of what’s allowing us to make this proposal.”