Gateway Regional School District Superintendent Dr. David B. Hopson.
I’m not surprised that the remaining towns of Chester, Huntington, and Russell once again voted down the district’s latest budget request given the selective use of statistics from both the towns and the schools that appear to show two very different versions of the towns’ and district’s financial standing. Given the information that I gleaned about the GTAC meeting prior to the these recent special town meetings (as GTAC meetings aren’t official and therefore don’t fall under the open meeting laws, they don’t have to provide official proceedings of their meetings for the public to review) it appears they spent this time to establish some talking points without seeking any additional information from the district (despite our offer to provide information to answer any questions they may have had). In reviewing some of these talking points, most of which are accurate but also misleading, it’s interesting to note some comparisons with other ‘data’.
One of the examples was that the superintendent’s salary was 300.7% of the state per pupil average. This is one piece of data that doesn’t mean any more than the fact that the perresident pay of Huntingon’s selectboard members is 2,200% higher than the per resident pay of members of Boston’s City Council. These comparisons are not relevant because they don’t take into account similarities or differences between rural communities/schools and larger urban cities (economies of scale); the differences between regional schools and city schools (total per pupil costs are often ‘off’ due to educational costs buried in city budgets); they don’t account for total administrative staffing (for example, state averages for administrative costs have risen by 19.4% between 2009 and 2014 while Gateway’s administrative costs have decreased by 11% during this time period); and they don’t account for the multiple jobs completed by superintendent’s in smaller districts (where assistant superintendents aren’t found) or by selectboard members in small towns.
Another example is the deliberate choice of just one item (organizational options) from the many recommendations of the MARS study of the district and then neglecting to acknowledge the efforts and successes in this area that the district has already undertaken. Just the additional administrative positions that were recommended as part of the MARS study would add a minimum of $150,000 for shared positions. The reality is that the school committee has already implemented a number of the recommendations and has a plan for implementing others in the near future.
It’s also interesting to see that there is concern from some officials that the district has money left over at the end of the fiscal year due to prudent financial decisions and continuous efforts to reduce costs. I can’t imagine these officials would like to see the district run a deficit, or to give up the reality that much of these savings are then used to offset town assessments for the district. The fact is that the towns, just like the district, have unspent money in their accounts at the end of every year and this is not a financial liability. If one looks at overall ‘state’ averages in educational expenditures from 2009 to 2014 you would see an increase of 14.5% while the Gateway budget has decreased by 6% with the result being that overall town assessments during this same period decreased from $10,022,095 to $8,674,088, and yet the district is being accused of poor financial planning or not being concerned about town assessments?
All of this goes to point out that we can use statistics to our advantage but the reality is that without ongoing dialogue, a willingness to openly discuss the issues, and a desire to improve our situations throughout the six towns we’ll end up allowing the state to set our financial parameters for the district and our towns. Given the lack of collaborative discussion in the recent past that’s evident in the recent votes on the district’s budget, I would again urge the towns to join the district in implementing the MARS recommendation for a facilitated discussion regarding finances and long-term planning as it appears that this is currently not happening through GTAC.
