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Date: 12/19/2022
HATFIELD – During their Dec. 15 meeting, the Hatfield School Committee conducted preliminary discussions about their upcoming budget planning for 2023-2024.
According to Hatfield superintendent Michael Wood, a preliminary budget will most likely be ready in January at some point.
Hatfield Public Schools recently shared their District Improvement Plan from 2022-2025. “Our plan is the product of many hours of conversation about the direction, needs and strengths of our district,” read the improvement plan, courtesy of Wood and Christy Boudreau, the chairperson of the Hatfield School Committee. “Looking at our success in many areas over the past years, Hatfield Public Schools is poised to enter a new phase where growth is key to unlocking the potential of what our staff, parents, and students can bring to enrich our programs and services.”
The plan indicated that the district aims to offer “diverse options” throughout the district to help make it a destination learning environment for parents, staff and students. The three major goals include reaching for excellence, growing enrollment, and nurturing an invested community – the latter of which includes maintaining a staff retention rate of 95 percent.
During the Dec. 15 meeting, the committee made it clear that the three-year district plan will partially inform the upcoming budget season in 2023-2024.
In his Budget Advisory Sub Committee Report, committee member Adam Sullivan said guidance from the town administrator indicated that all department heads, including the School Committee, should provide a “level services budget” that meets operational needs. For costs outside of the level services budget, the committee would need to provide a narrative describing the services and an explanation of additional costs and why they are needed.
Looking ahead, Sullivan said there will be a decrease in grant funds since all of the COVID-19 relief funds have been spent. The district is also expecting a slight decline in school choice monies but some notable savings in special education tuition.
“We are going to be saving about $42,000 at Hatfield Elementary next year and about $25,000 at Smith Academy next year just by keeping students in-house,” said Sullivan. “We’ve been able to build the programs here.”
The report also indicated that the committee will vote to accept tuition money sometime in the near future for students who are brought into the Hatfield programs from other districts.
“I think we owe administration a clear voice…and instruction,” said Boudreau, when referring to the budget.
Wood believes that Hatfield can deliver a level services budget with the resources that the district has now, but he also hopes that the School Committee offers some direction of where they want the district to go, especially with staffing.
“There’s some things that we can do in-house with staff that we already have that can start to add around the edges in terms of programs and services,” said Wood. “We’ve begun those conversations and we need to open those up and talk with staff about where to go with that.”
The committee will look to have specific conversations about destination programs they may want to add based on their District Improvement Plan with the understanding that a level services budget would most likely not get them to their desired point in three years, unless a viable case is made for an extra investment outside of level services.
“And I don’t want to sugarcoat it, I think level services is still going to be an investment,” said Boudreau.
“There are costs that are rising, which I’m sure is true in every town.”
School Committee member Rebecca Bench said she believes that the committee put together a good district improvement plan.
“In every town budget, especially a small town, the school is a point of pride,” said Bench. “Going through the budget process last year, I do think that it became clear for many reasons that we did need to cut some programming over the past decade…from my perspective, I think that continuing to fund a level service budget will probably not meet these goals that we set.”
Committee member Jennifer Maloney, meanwhile, said that the improvement plan is a good “springboard” for “slightly” easier years ahead for planning. She also hopes to have more discussions around tuition-based plans to help the needs of certain students.
“I have a hard time writing a plan that we all feel can work, and then not writing a budget that supports it,” said Boudreau. “I feel like this is really the time we have to go out and educate families and give them a reason for wanting to support some investment.”