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Date: 4/7/2021
SOUTH HADLEY – The South Hadley School Committee hosted their budget hearing on the evening of March 30. Since the beginning of January, Interim Superintendent Dr. Diana Bonneville said they have been going over the fiscal year 2022 budget for the last few months, going over sections at a time.
"We really believe that it's our duty to challenge every student to the fullest of our capabilities through a supportive learning environment to make sure they become life-long learners and really become responsible citizens in a global diverse society," Bonneville stated.
Budget Process
Bonneville and Business Manager Jenn Voyk showed the committee a slide presentation of the budget process for this year. In October of 2020, they had an initial budget developed through the superintendent's office and reached out to Town Administrator Mike Sullivan to get an idea of where they were going to fall for Fiscal Year 2022 (FY22,) insofar as what the town thought was going to be available for the school budgets. In November, they sent out budget preparation materials to the principals and the Special Education Department so they could meet with their teams at each school to figure out what the needs were going to be for next year and had weekly district leadership team meetings to discuss the budget in December.
From January through March of 2021, the committee took each section of the district budget and reviewed it line by line. Their FY22 proposed budget is $22,476,460, which is an increase of $500,000 for a net percent increase of 2.28 percent.
“We have been on a gradual increase for the last five years. The FY22 will be our largest increase at 2.28 percent,” Voyk said. “As always our largest percentage of our budget goes to instruction and salaries, so 71.88 percent is for instruction, administration is 3.91 percent, tuition is 5.44 percent, our fixed cost is very small at 0.05 percent and then our operations and maintenance 7.18 percent and our student services 11.54 percent. This is just an overview of the bottom line number that we are hoping to present to the town for the town meeting on May 12.”
Unanimously, the committee accepted the FY22 proposed operating budget of South Hadley Public Schools as presented.
Update of School Choice slots
At their March 1 meeting, the committee approved 21 school slots for next year. Five in grade 2, two in grade 4, four in grade 6, two in grade 7, four in grade 8 and four already in for Grade 11. Because the budget was approved, Bonneville said they can offer more slots at the high school level. She proposed that they offer five slots for grade 9, 10 slots for grade 10 and an additional six slots in grade 11.
This brings the total school choice slots to 42.
The committee accepted the proposal to increase the school choice slots as presented by Bonneville.
The committee also approved a donation from South Hadley High School reunion class of 1948 in the sum of $1,000 to the Smith Educational Fund.
Changes in FY21 & FY22 Calendars
The change in the FY21 calendar is the addition of seven half-day Wednesdays from April 14 to June 9. Election Days for the FY22 calendar will be Nov. 8 and April 12, 2022. February vacation was moved to take place on Feb. 21 to the 25. The committee again approved the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school calendars as proposed.
The committee will have their next scheduled meeting on April 5.