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Date: 3/21/2023
WALES — The first pass of the Wales Elementary School fiscal year 2024 (FY24) budget has a 2 percent increase from FY23, but there is a 10 percent decrease in enrollment numbers.
Superintendent Deborah Boyd provided an overview of the FY24 budget during the School Committee meeting on March 15.
“Things are not good in Wales financially,” she said. “An increase with decreased product is a concern.”
The Wales Elementary School currently has 89 students enrolled, with 130 students enrolled in secondary education.
For years now, Boyd said, she only goes after what a town can afford, in which the town cannot support the school’s demands. Because of this, by the end of the meeting, Boyd shared that she would be asking for a lower budget number.
“We have done a lot of work to keep our little school going and we want to justify its existence,” said Boyd.
Through conversations with Principal Kerri Mahota, a model has been created for next year to combine kindergarten and pre-K for 4-year-olds. “The four-year-olds that live in Brimfield and Holland — to get some basic pre-K — are going to come back and spend half a day [here]. The kindergarten teachers are going to have kindergarten students all day and half a day, also, pre-K,” shared Boyd.
She noted that this will create excitement for the 4-year-olds that will soon be attending Wales Elementary School full-time and justifies classroom existence with more students.
Boyd explained that the pre-K tuition payments will come back, and they can reduce a piece of the kindergarten staff costs by the amount they project those tuitions to be.
The superintendent’s other request was to eliminate one of the buses. “We cannot justify three buses,” she said. She explained that the routes will need to be changed for the two buses at the elementary school, but not on the secondary level.
Boyd predicts eliminating one bus will save about $25,000.
With the elimination of one bus, Boyd said school start and end times would need to be adjusted. She noted that Tantasqua Regional High School is the furthest from Wales of the four towns it serves, so for everyone to be picked up and dropped off safely, school times would need to be modified. She shared that they are currently working on making some final tweaks to this proposal.
Following her remarks, Boyd went through the FY24 budget line items to answer questions she thought would be asked.
Overall, the FY24 budget was $1.96 million — a 2 percent increase from the FY23 budget of $1.92 million.
Operations of buses in FY24 “bumped up a bit” from FY23 to FY24, said Boyd. “We are trying to be optimistic in hoping to keep the cost down [and] that at some point, gasoline prices go down because your special ed transportation is completely subject to supply costs and gasoline.”
Boyd noted that the school received a better fuel price than expected. If the town still needs them to “nickel and dime” after the budget reduction, she said there is about $2,000 that could be used. A $3.50 rate was anticipated for fuel costs. Currently the school is paying $2.90 compared to last year’s cost of $1.70. She said a projection was built for $3.50 but they received a price of $3.05.
“We have to be very honest with our taxpayers and ask for what we absolutely need, not ask for what we don’t need,” said Boyd.
She continued, “I am recommending we reduce the budget by $25,000.” Boyd said this includes a little bit of wiggle room because the contractual bus amount was $31,000, but she knows it will cost the drivers more time to do the other two routes after one is pulled away. A part of the $25,000 will also be the tuition revenues used to reduce the staffing line once the number of preschoolers is projected.
“I would recommend that we move forward with a budget request of $1.93 million,” said Boyd. This is a 0.7 percent increase from the FY23 budget.
A motion was made, seconded and approved to move the $1.93 million FY24 budget to a vote at the Wales Town Meeting.
Registration
Mahota noted that pre-K and kindergarten registration is now open, although it has been “very slow coming in.” She shared that she knows of children out there, they just need to be registered.
School choice
Mahota said two school choice applications were received — one for an incoming second grader and one for an incoming fifth grader. She recommended that they vote to accept any students at this point.
A motion was made to accept up to 22 school choice students. The motion was seconded and approved.
Future meetings
Moving forward, Wales Elementary School Committee meetings will take place on the first Wednesday of each month.