Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 2/22/2022
HAMPSHIRE COUNTY – The School Committee of the Hampshire Regional School District passed a budget for the 2022-2023 school year of $16.1 million. According to the presentation by district staff, the increase to the budget of 4.63 percent has four drivers: transportation, special education, salary increases and pandemic-related expenses.
The increases in the budget total $673,807, of which $486,807 is necessary to maintain level services. The increase did not sit well with some committee members.
“The budget keeps going up,” said member Neil Godden, “and I don’t see how it’s sustainable at these percentages. 4.36? 3.86? 4.37? My seven closest neighbors are over 60. I don’t see how they’re going to be able to handle this.”
Godden, a committee member representing Goshen, will see a levy increase for his town of 5.87 percent. Chesterfield will benefit from a drop of 17.04 percent. Those changes represent fluctuations in student census numbers and the resulting changes in responsibility for each town. Southampton will see its levy payment bump up by 1.74 percent. Easthampton and Williamsburg will see increases of 5.26 percent and 4.66 percent respectively.
The major bones of contention among committee members were the additional requests for two new staff members, an adjustment counselor and Tier II intervention teacher. Those combined salaries add $122,000 to the budget.
“If we don’t fund these we’re shooting ourselves in the foot,” said committee member Dylan Mawdsley. “The expenses for an out of district assignment would cost us to the tune of $55,000 a student.”
The new adjustment counselor is a measure to respond to the sharp increases in the needs for mental health supports and limited access to outside financial contributors. Front office staff acknowledged the new hire, as Mawdsley noted, is an effort to prevent out of district placements, which can be very expensive.
The Tier II intervention teacher will offer support for regular education students falling behind in their reading skills. According to the administration, among seventh grade students that do not have individual education plans, 16 percent are well below standard benchmarks. Another 27 percent are in need of “strategic support.”
“We could make an argument that these positions can be linked to [COVID-19],” said Hampshire Regional High School Principal Lauren Hotz. “That said, the need for these positions has been with us for quite some time.”
Capital items added $65,000 to the budget. One of the three boilers at the school leaks. All three need new control boards, expenses the school staff presented as a continuance of the recent investments in HVAC upgrades. Booster pumps supplying water to the school also need maintenance, an investment of $15,000 that will see the replacement of both control boards and motors.
School Choice income was a hot topic. Business administrator Bobby Jones cautioned committee members not to look at that income to underwrite operating costs.
“I say it every single year,” Jones said. “That’s a fluid number that changes as we go. These are best guesses…[and] there’s no way to know how many people will go out to charter” schools. Loss of a student costs the district a tuition at the full per pupil cost of the charter school.
The School Choice numbers are one bright spot in the budget picture. Currently, the high school shows 142 School Choice students coming into the district. Committee member Peter Cleary asked about using that income to offset the levy paid by the towns. Jones did not encourage the idea.
“We are setting a precedent to use School Choice money to offset costs for changes in programming,” Jones said.
The presentation of the budget made it clear that contractual increases were the primary driver behind the budget increase. Nonetheless, Dawn Scaparotti, chair of Goshen’s Finance Committee, clarified the squeeze the budget forces the town to deal with.
“The town is allowed to go up 2.5 percent,” Scaparotti said, referring to the maximum increase under the commonwealth’s Proposition 2.5 law. “For Goshen, that’s $69,000. Right now, $67,000 out of (that) is being requested by the two schools…We would have to recommend an override. No matter the reason, it doesn’t leave much for the town.”
The school committee voted 10-6, and with the weighting of numbers resulted in a 60 percent vote in favor the proposed budget.