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Date: 1/18/2022
HATFIELD – Interim Superintendent Michael Wood brought a draft of the fiscal year 2023 (FY23) Hatfield school budget to the School Committee on Jan. 12 He sounded a cautionary note about School Choice, but offered an overall picture of fiscal continuity.
“Our main funding sources are the town and School Choice,” Wood said. “Our School Choice money, we should make sure everyone knows we have space.”
Wood made a presentation to the committee that included a bar graph of income sources. Last year School Choice income, including special education reimbursements, reached $978,477. He suggested that, in consideration of projected enrollments, the district should cut its reliance on School Choice income by six figures.
“Going forward, I’m thinking we should use about $860,000, based on who we have in our system right now,” Wood said. “It’s gone down a little bit, what we’re getting in ... and we have a small balance.”
Wood suggested that keeping a balance in the School Choice account creates greater flexibility for the School Committee. If an emergency expenditure comes up, the committee will have a small pot of money to draw from.
“We will have depleted COVID[-19] funds,” Wood said, referring to the ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund) grants. Those grants soften the impact of the pandemic on districts. “We’ll finish our ESSER grant next year with the things we said we were going to fund with it.”
Committee member Catherine Englehardt commented that neighboring districts entirely drain their School Choice reserves, then hit a budget impasse. “It was understood School Choice money was an extra,” Englehardt said. “We also don’t want to rely on School Choice monies for payroll, for salaries.”
The warning came too late. Wood underscored the risk facing the district when he said, “You can’t have an overreliance on School Choice to run the school system. But we’re there.”
Other sources of income bumped upward to fill in the gap of reduced School Choice earnings. Circuit breaker monies increased about $8,000, preschool income is projected to increase about $30,000, and salary monies show a similar bump of about $21,000, from $86,623 to $107,817.
Wood is waiting to hear if a large grant of $136,000 for added socio-emotional services for students and families will come to the district. The Hatfield district is also awaiting news on extra funds from the Student Opportunity Act and Rural Aid. That aid could reach $100,000 per district, or be split among five districts, of which Hatfield is one.
“Most of our dollars go to the instruction needs of our students, and that’s what we want to see,” Wood said. “The other components, these are the cost centers. They have not fluctuated much between last year and this year.”
A pie chart showed that 45.8 percent of the FY23 budget will go to instructional expenses, 2.4 percent will pay administrative costs, facilities will consume 13.7 percent of the budget, and other school expenses will utilize 30.5 percent.
The role in the budget of sports and pre-school held no surprises. “Preschool is evolving. Again we will have a model where we spend only what we get in,” Wood said. “Sports? We have winning teams, so that means more transportation expense ... [But] it’s important to know this budget may change over time.”
The variables that still need to be settled involve teacher and paraprofessional contract negotiations, COVID-19 relief funding, Chapter 70 educational aid from the commonwealth, and any changes to federal funding, including a decision on the free lunch program. Wood said he will move forward with the budget, assuming that some money will come to subsidize school lunches.
Enrollments will go up next year by two students at Hatfield Elementary. The population at Smith Academy will increase 10 students, from 170 to 180.
“What I tried to do is maintain the number of teachers and sections,” Wood said. The expenses of classroom teaching have increased the costs. “Technology is such an integrated part of education now, it’s critical that we keep it updated. Software too.”
Englehardt commented that she was glad to see “an allowance for growth, which started with the two preschools. If we had an earlier conversation about that we would’ve had more people at that preschool.”
Wood’s presentation was about over. He said, “It’s a really challenging effort to complete the picture.”