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Date: 5/5/2021
SOUTHAMPTON - The Southampton Elementary School Committee conducted a meeting on on April 28, during which the principal report was shared with information regarding MCAS testing dates.
Grade 3 testing will be May 10 and 19; grade 4, May 13 and 24; grade 5, May 11 and 25 and June 2; and grade 6, May 27 and June 1.
As of now, enrollment for April 2021 is at 465 students, including 428 in person students from PreK- 6. 28 students continue to be remote which is down from 40 in the last report. Six students receive drop-in services only.
Allison Radon, School Committee member shared, the PTO is looking for people to join them or even take over/run for some of the positions. Next year, they will need a new board member.
The PTO has $15,000 balance in their coffers. They will be donating $500 to the senior scholarship award to a Hampshire Regional High School student who went to Norris Elementary.
Austin Rogers, school council member, said in their last meeting, they were updated on budget priorities for the upcoming fiscal year 2022 (FY22).
“We were also given an update on capital improvement items that were submitted to the town and the reading committee that’s working on selection of the reading curriculum to be purchased by the school,” explained Rogers.
This was narrowed to four programs and the committee has been working on presentations with the company. This system will be paid for with their current budget.
Jon Lumbra, committee chair, and five district agreement working group member said, they have reached about 85 percent completion of putting down an agreement for the five towns to use.
“I believe we are making excellent progress on the cautionary piece of it right now, and the recurring theme there amongst everybody is: can we do this in a very equable way to all the communities?” stated Lumbra.
He said if all goes well, within a few weeks the agreement will be released to everyone. Their goal is to complete this before interim Superintendent Michael Sullivan retires.
Lumbra explained to members that a budget needed to be finalized before adjourning the meeting.
He went on to say, even after town adjustments, they are looking at about an $800,000 issue systemwide.
A long discussion and some disagreement took place among school committee members in regard to class sizes and teacher cuts.
The majority of the school committee members said they don’t believe teachers should be cut, especially in the midst of a pandemic.
Additional options in budgeting were suggested however, a motion was put forward by Austin Rogers to use Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Funds (ESSER) to reduce the out of district tuition by $25,000.
The motion was unanimously approved.
Gregory Bennett, committee member, put forward a final motion to go back to their original $5.6 million budget for approval and submission to the town.
The motion was seconded, however an amendment was made by Rogers, to take $17,256 out of the operating budget and use the ESSER II and III grant funding to support.
The final request was $5.4 million.
All committee members agreed to the motion.
Requests for capital improvements at Norris included the repair of cracked sidewalks, carpeting in rooms, repairs in entrances, interior classroom and fire doors and vertical blinds in the cafeteria.