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Date: 11/23/2020
SOUTHWICK – During a joint meeting on Nov. 19, Southwick-Tolland-Granville Regional School District (STGRSD) School Committee hosted a budget roundtable for the district’s fiscal year 2022 (FY22) budget with elected officials from Southwick, Tolland, and Granville.
To start the conversation, STGRSD Director of Finance and Operations Stephen Presnal gave an update on where the fiscal year 2021 budget currently stands and said they were currently expecting losses in Chapter 70 funding and transportation reimbursements based on preliminary state budget figures.
“Chapter 70 aid is down $43,000 from what the governor released back in January, and the regional transportation reimbursement is down by $258,000, but we think that is going to come back up. We think when they actually look at the real numbers, our number will come back up, but we have to prepare for the worst-case scenario,” Presnal said.
He clarified that the cuts to transportation reimbursement would likely be independent from school buses.
Presnal said at this point it was best for the district to stay with the currently approved budget and that altering the budget mid-year has not happened at any point in the past 20 years.
“What we’re hopeful the towns would be in agreement with is to remain with the approved budget and assessments as they exist. Nobody can recall the district ever amending a budget mid-year. So, there’s been a long tradition of sticking with the numbers as approved,” he said.
After Presnal’s presentation, Superintendent Jennifer Willard discussed the current uncertainties with the 2022 fiscal year budget planning, beginning with Student Information Management System (SIMS) data for the current school year.
“We have to file the SIMS data on Oct. 1 every year, it’s a number they use at the state level for our foundation budget. Our SIMS data for 2019 was 1,330 and for 2020 is 1,253 students. That loss comes from a discrepancy in the grade 12 and incoming kindergarten, new home schools, and students who went to private school,” she said.
One of the biggest drop-offs in enrollment that affected this year’s data was students that should be beginning kindergarten are staying home an extra year because of the pandemic.
“The majority of that is the difference in our kindergarten enrollment this year, it is extremely low. A lot of parents who had children eligible for Kindergarten kept them home this year and will let them begin their formal education next year,” Willard said. “We are expecting a large incoming Kindergarten class next year, disproportionate to what we had in the past.”
While the foundation budget may be lower, Willard explained the district would get additional state aid because of its Hold Harmless situation.
“We are in a Hold Harmless situation, even though we’ve had a loss of about 100 students, it will not affect our Chapter 70 funding. We get an additional $4,177,000 in state aid every year; we can also expect to get at least $9,846,558 next year as well. That is the only good news we get from being in a hold harmless situation,” she said.
Willard added that Hold Harmless was expected to be left alone this year.
Currently, she said there are more questions than answers with planning the FY22 budget.
“Next year is a big question mark as we don’t know what’s going to happen with COVID-19, we don’t know what the funding sources are going to be next year, we don’t know if there’s going to be additional grants, we don’t know if there is a vaccination or if we’ll be able to decrease our safety measures. All of that plays into funding and the number of teachers we will need in our classrooms,” Willard said.
At this point in the discussion, Presnal once again chimed in to say that the district could be in trouble if local contribution rates for schools go up in the next fiscal year.
“The local aid resolution lowered the required local contributions for all three towns versus what the governor put out in January. For Southwick it’s a fairly significant number, $288,000, for Tolland it’s $1,800, and for Granville it’s about $47,000. The fear is that you’d see this dip in required local contributions at the same time enrollment is bumping back up and that would create a pressure point,” he said.
To end the discussion, Southwick Select Board Clerk Russ Fox suggested the towns team up and send a letter to the local legislature about the district’s needs.
“I think it would be a good idea if Southwick, Tolland, and Granville sent a letter to our legislative representatives and make them aware of our concerns as towns and how this is going to affect our towns and the region, just to makes sure they understand this is more than a school issue,” he said.