It’s exciting to have the students back in school and to see all of our staff working with them as if summer never interfered in their educational process. The life that students bring into the building, their vitality and energy, and their participation in school activities certainly make the buildings feel more like schools. In addition, seeing the student athletes practice, and begin play, as well as the students preparing for extra-curricular activities, emphasizes the importance of educating the whole child and supporting 21st Century Skills.
As always there were a few glitches in scheduling, some minor bussing concerns, and a few students facing some anxious moments as they entered new classrooms, buildings, and met new teachers. Despite this, it was an excellent opening and things seemed to settle down quite quickly. We’re all looking forward to a successful year.
The school committee continues to work on a ‘new’ budget to provide to the towns for the third time, hoping to have a budget in place before the state sets our budget on December 1st. Their meeting last week saw some excellent discussion on several topics, including much input from the Chester and Blandford town officials who were present. The committee was reminded that Chester could easily afford their increase this year but wanted to support Huntington and Russell with their concerns (Huntington’s issues, according to these officials, was similar to Chester’s in terms of ensuring that town officials would be part of the budget process, rather than a financial issue, which seems to be Russell’s primary issue). There was some discussion around a five-year rolling average and the problem with that being that the town with the largest increase in assessments (Russell) also has the lowest per pupil costs (roughly $5,000 lower than Blandford and Middlefield), which may make it difficult to convince voters in those towns to support even higher costs to offset assessments. The administration also pointed out several items, such as the decrease in the overall budget over the years; town assessments for education decreasing as a percentage of total town budgets over the last decade; and the increasingly difficult task of reducing the budget without losing additional student services. As one school committee member pointed out, the district reduced the requested/improvement budget significantly (over $500,000) before even presenting it to the school committee, and then reduced that budget by over $100,000 for the second version. Steph Fisk, Gateway’s business manager, did indicate that, depending on the remaining staff hires, we may be able to reduce the budget slightly without cutting services. It was decided that the committee would look at potential budget changes at its next meeting and hear from administrators about what a reduction of one staff person would look like at the building and special education levels.
Following up on the school committee’s desire to invite town officials to participate in next year’s budget process, the district requested contact information from the towns. The district has also created a means to message town officials who ‘opt in’ to the group in order to share information about the budget process, upcoming meetings, and school committee materials. Our hope is that many officials will take advantage of this opportunity. In addition, the district has opened up a method for anyone to receive information from the district level using a communications program called “Remind” to further expand communications with parents and the community. This requires individuals to sign up for notifications and the procedure can be found on the website under Parent Resources and then “Superintendent’s Remind Account Signup Instructions”. While we provide much information on the budget, in addition to other activities in the district, we are working to make delivery of this information easier for all of our constituents. We all have a wonderful district, great students, and beautiful communities and, along with the towns’ economic development efforts, we need to let more people know what we have, and what they’re missing by not being part of the Gateway Community.
