Adams-Cheshire Schools Preparing For Downsizing
ADAMS, Mass. — Town officials agree that the Adams-Cheshire Regional School District must close a school — and that it shouldn't be C.T. Plunkett Elementary.
That consensus came during last week's review of the school budget during the third of four nights of fiscal 2017 budgetary review by the Selectmen and Finance Committee. Wednesday's review focused on Adams-Cheshire and McCann Technical School that together make 39 percent of the entire $14.5 million spending plan for 2017.
Most of the evenings attention was focused on the Adams-Cheshire budget of $18,995,762, which reflects near $1 million in cuts that include more than a dozen staff cuts.
School Committee member Darlene Rodowicz said the Berkshire County Education Task Force is looking at regional solutions, however, any recommendation is years out. She said ACRSD does not have years.
Selectman John Duval agreed and advocated investing in Plunkett so the town does not end up with another empty school.
"We need to start soon and we need to reduce to two schools," Selectman John Duval said. "We need to put up the best product we can for Plunkett School because we own that ... we need to make sure when that decision is made Plunkett School is the one that remains."
Selectman Arthur "Skip" Harrington agreed with Duval, saying the town needs to address the maintenance issues in Plunkett.
Rodowicz said there are pros and cons to each elementary school: Cheshire is older and in disrepair but is in a much better location. C.T. Plunkett also needs repairs not addressed in the budget, but can hold more students. But it has little parking and is on a heavily trafficked road.
The budget, which is actually $110,767 less than this year's, is not educationally sound, said Rodowicz, but was driven down by a newly implemented state funding formula that uses both enrolment and the relative wealth of both communities.
To keep Cheshire under the levy limit the budget had to be cut, which because of the formula, forced a reduction to Adams.
"What drove this reduction was we were trying to build a budget that both communities could afford," Rodowicz said. "Cheshire can't afford another override so we agreed to get Cheshire to that number ... we ended up having to give Adams a reduction of $74,000 to keep all of the ratios in sync."
She added that the newly implement relative wealth formula could change. Now it is only 70 percent implemented. If it jumps to 100 percent, this funding gap will increase.
Adams' assessment will be $5,446,707; Cheshire's is $2,640,064, which is a $53,587 increase from this year. Both assessments include the debt exclusion from the Hoosac Valley High School renovation.
Adams did offer up half of its growth to the school district but the new formula cut the original 3 percent increase.
Rodowicz said along with being slammed by a health increase increase, stagnant state funding, partial state reimbursement, and rising costs, the towns have to come together and decide what education will look like in the future.
She said the "stop gap" budget will keep the district afloat while it looks for ways to share services and choose a school to close. She said this effort will be picked up right after the budget is accepted and, hopefully, the extra funds will return the reduced staff and services.
"That will be our work going forward, and it is the reality that we have," Rodowicz said. "We don't have the ability to fund what it takes to educate our students. We put out a good product, but in the end it is a tight budget."
She noted that the budget has no "fluff" and with the closing of Eagleton School, a special-education residential school in South County, some of the residential students may find foster care in Adams. If the district is forced to take on these students and they need residential care, it could easily cost the district more than $100,000 per student.
Adams' assessment to McCann is up $70,274 to $788,443. The total McCann budget is $8.8 million, up 3 percent or $243,430.
Much like ACRSD, McCann was hit hard with health insurance increases and flat Chapter 70 education funds and the assessment to Adams reflects internal changes of nearly $100,000 to save the member communities money.
"This has been probably one of the most difficult budgets we have been through," Daniel Maloney, Adams representative to the Northern Berkshire Vocational School District. "You may look at it at first glance and say it doesn't look bad but there has been a lot of internal review to make this all work here."
Superintendent James Brosnan said insurance and retiree health insurance accounts for near 2.04 percent of the 2.75 percent increase.
"Those two items alone have accounted for $164,000 in increases in the budgets … the rest of it is pretty much level funded, covered by grants, covered by other sources, or holes for another day — not to take away from the educational piece but allow us to do what we do."
Tags: ACRSD_budget, adams_budget, Finance Committee, fiscal 2017, McCann,
