I must say that having town officials attend and participate in this year’s budget process has been very informative and interesting. The ability for town officials, school committee members, and members of the administration to discuss items, look at alternatives, and trade concerns about overall finances ahead of annual town meetings may provide for some clarification, understanding, and hopefully support as we all move forward.
As indicated in prior columns, the district put forward a level-service budget with the opportunity to add some items to improve student opportunities, primarily around literacy. The presentation shown at the January 24th meeting highlighted major changes in the line item budget and, with the exception of yet-to-be negotiated raises, those increases are due to contractual obligations, utilities and insurance. Despite facing these same challenges over the past five years, the district’s bottom line budget for next year is only 0.25% higher than in FY’14.
Town officials indicated their understanding of this and the fact that they also face similar issues in their operating budgets, along with many deferred capital items (i.e., fire and highway equipment). Town officials indicated that they needed to see what a level-funded budget would mean to the students in order to better understand the issues and to explain/answer questions about the need to support school committee requests. My understanding from those exchanges wasn’t that they could only support the budget if it didn’t mean any increases in assessments but rather that they needed additional information to make a final recommendation.
To that end, the district is reviewing the line item budget, looking at student needs, and determining what a level-funded budget would look like. While the administration could never support cuts that would harm students, we understand some of the fiscal challenges facing the towns as well as the challenges in fully understanding the school budgets—including government mandates and requirements that MUST be funded. As the budget process continues to make its way to school committee approval in March, we will provide a list of reductions for the basis of discussion and as a means of further informing the public.
What is obvious from budget discussions over many years is that we are not alone in this dilemma of stretching finite dollars to meet the many needs of the towns and schools, and that these problems are even worse in the smaller schools and more rural areas of the state. The problems are multiple, from unfunded mandates that are not flexible enough to reflect differences in school size, the type of students being served, and the uniqueness of different communities to the inability of the state to fund schools as promised (either through regional transportation reimbursement or Chapter 70 aid to schools). The Small and Rural Schools Coalition has also shown that the problems facing smaller and rural schools with declining enrollments are very real, and is working to include a funding solution in next year’s state budget. Gateway is also being forced to pay the state back for funding for the elementary schools that are now being used for town functions (such as in Blandford) and will face the same issue for the Russell school next year, despite the state having approved the building plan in the first place and then pushing smaller districts to consolidate schools for efficiencies. As we’re all well aware, paying the state back makes it very difficult to achieve cost savings despite gains in efficiencies. It’s time the state faces the issues and takes action on multiple fronts to ensure that students in small and rural schools are not denied an equal opportunity to those in larger, more wealthy suburbs. It’s time to adequately fund small, rural schools so that small towns are not forced to pay a substantially higher percentage of local taxes to support their schools than those in more urban districts.
