Mount Greylock School District Facing Tough Budget Choices
 Mount Greylock School Committee will have to decide how much of a budget increase to fight for next fiscal year. Above, Chairwoman Carolyn Greene, interim superintendent Gordon Noseworthy and committee member Chris Dodig. |
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock Regional School Committee heads into budget season having to decide whether it wants to fight for funds the district says it needs to maintain education.
At last week's meeting of the committee, Chairwoman Carolyn Greene and interim Superintendent Gordon Noseworthy shared their impressions of a recent meeting with town officials in Lanesborough, one of Mount Greylock's two member towns.
Their report was less than encouraging.
"Basically, they said they want us to cut out budget," Greene said. "They said they would limit us to 1 percent or less of an increase. If we wanted any more, we would have to fight it out on the floor of town meeting, which they didn't want to do."
Greene reminded her colleagues of what happened last year, when the junior-senior high school district proposed a budget that called for a 4 percent increase for fiscal 2015.
"That was very upsetting to them," she said. "The fact that we came [back] at 2.7 percent was not good enough for them, and they said we had to do more to cut the budget."
The School Committee will see a preliminary budget later this winter and plans to hold public hearings in each town in March.
After taking input from the towns, the committee then will propose a final budget for approval at town meeting — in May for Williamstown and June for Lanesborough.
Greene indicated that there might be popular support for the budget the district proposes, regardless of recommendations from town officials.
"We can present a budget we feel good about and that would serve our school ... within the realm of, say a 2 to 3 percent increase ... or we can say, 'This is never going to fly' and keep it down to 1 percent," she said.
"One way to think about it is to say the public hearing is the place to have that discussion. We had a heated discussion at last year's [Lanesborough] public hearing, but it was mostly town officials [in attendance]. We could ask members of the public to come to the hearing.
"We could use it as a time to mobilize parents and community members to give feedback on the budget."
Parents mobilized earlier this academic year when Mount Greylock cut back on its late bus runs — one of the cuts that allowed the district to bring its assessment down to a 2.7 percent increase last spring.
"There was a lot of pushback on the buses," Greene reminded the committee. "We need to be clear that if we need to cut from 3 [percent] to 1, this is what we're cutting."
District Business Manager Lynn Bassett presented the committee with some of the assumptions that she is using to build the proposed budget for fiscal 2016. Among the highlights — or lowlights — are a projected 10 percent increase in health insurance cost ($114,000) and a $120,000 debt repayment on the 2009 locker room/boiler project.
Part of last year's belt-tightening — even before the pushback from Lanesborough town officials — was a decision to make a minimum payment on the $1.2 million bond. The district has been trying to retire the debt to clear the decks for a hoped-for renovation or rebuild through the Massachusetts School Building Authority program.
In other business on Tuesday, the committee acknowledged the resignation of Williamstown resident Colleen Taylor, who was elected to a four-year seat on the board in 2012. Taylor's letter of resignation said that changes in her personal life left her unable to give the time required by the elected position, Greene said.
The committee plans a joint meeting with the select boards from Williamstown and Lanesborough on Feb. 3 to appoint a replacement. Greene said that Steven Miller, who was the odd man out in a three-person race for two seats in last November's election, has submitted paperwork to fill out the remainder of Taylor's term.
The School Committee also on heard from Building Committee Chairman Mark Schiek, who told the panel that he, Greene and Noseworthy will be returning to Boston on Jan. 27 and hopefully coming back with the name of an architect for the building project.
The trio went to meet with the MSBA earlier this month and had a productive meeting with the state authority, Schiek said. Greene added that the MSBA officials "were equal members of the selection panel" and not following the dictates of the authority.
The meeting also featured a report from the district's digital media learning specialist, Richard Scullin. Scullin brought the committee members up to speed on how technology is being utilized inside and outside the classroom, including several interdisciplinary initiatives and day-to-day classroom management that is being facilitated by Google Classroom.
Tags: fiscal 2016, MGRHS, school budget,
