Despite the viewpoint of many, including some recent news articles, that the Gateway School Committee is dysfunctional, business is still being conducted. Rather than focus on the debate about the lack of unity, trust, communications, and progress in addressing agenda items — which is really up to the committee to resolve — I’ll focus on some of the larger issues and, even more importantly, on what the committee has accomplished. I’ll also take a bit of space to discuss a current item of committee business related to establishing a Regional Transportation Reimbursement Fund (RTR Fund).
The largest issue the district is currently facing is the withdrawal of the Town of Worthington and its potential impact on the future of the Gateway District. This issue impacts financing, student numbers, district operations and perhaps most importantly, the potential for other towns to leave the district. I was pleased to see a published response from the Russell Selectboard indicating that they were going to take no action on the request from a small number of residents to look at potentially withdrawing from the district. Rather, the Selectboard pointed out that it made more sense to work at strengthening the existing system and working together to address the difficulties arising from Worthington’s withdrawal. I believe the School Committee and district will be doing much work over the next year to determine what our communities want from Gateway and ways to move an already successful district forward to better meet our students’ needs. My hope is that, as with the 2015 planning undertaken ten years ago, we will have significant input from all of the district’s constituencies.
Gateway is already preparing for the future and the school committee recently approved some important changes to solving some issues. This includes voting to move to solar energy to both reduce costs and support efforts in being a ‘green’ school. The commitment to a 20-year solar project that should provide nearly $500,000 in savings is significant in many ways. In addition, the School Committee recently approved the administration’s work on refinancing our long-term bonding for the building project that will yield savings in excess of $500,000 over the next ten years. While neither of these items saves a significant amount of money each year relative to the total budget, they are reflective of the efforts the committee and district have undertaken to maintain costs. As we’ve heard from at least one town finance committee, it’s not the expenses of the district that is the concern but rather the revenue, specifically the reduction of support from the state over many years. When one considers that next year’s budget request is $418,056 less than the current budget (a decrease of 2.5 percent) and only $296,180 more than it was 14 years ago in 2003 (an total increase of 1.8 percent over the same time period), that revenue is down by $1,432,893 (of which over $400,000 is due to reductions in state aid) it’s easy to see why Gateway is counting on the promise of mitigation funding from our legislators.
As we never know the final state numbers until after the state budget is finalized (almost always no earlier than late June or early July) and knowing that potential midyear decreases sometimes occur (as with this year’s state transportation reimbursement due to 9C reductions) it’s also important for the committee to take a long term view of financial stabilization beyond bonding and solar power. One of the new opportunities for this is the RTR Fund that can now be established due to Chapter 233 of the Acts of 2014, which became effective in November of 2014. This allows regional school districts, beginning in Fiscal Year 2015, to put regional transportation reimbursements into a fund allowing this to be carried forward one year. These funds can only be expended in the next fiscal year (or if needed due to 9C reductions, in that same fiscal year) on regional transportation expenses. These funds can be used in developing the following year’s budget based upon estimated regional transportation amounts but cannot be used to increase any approved budget without the School Committee and towns amending and approving a new budget. If these funds are not used within the following fiscal year, then they roll into the E&D fund thereby eliminating the chance that the district will increase it’s ‘reserves’ (E&D is limited to 5% of the district’s budget). In short, the RTR Fund, if established and funded at Gateway (for example by a greater than expected reimbursement amount than was originally estimated for a fiscal year), can only be used for regional transportation expenses, cannot be carried for more than the subsequent fiscal year, and cannot increase the budget without approval of the member towns. At the same time, such a fund may provide a consistent offset of town assessments, could have eliminated the angst and operating changes entailed in this year’s 9C reductions (one of the reasons for this change in the law), and makes budget planning more effective for both the district and the towns. The committee will be taking up the approval of an RTR fund during its June meetings.
