Pittsfield Schools Projecting Surplus But With Areas of Concern
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Tuition payments are down significantly this year but the savings is being eaten up by other areas of the school budget.
Deputy Superintendent Kristin Behnke provided the School Committee with a mid-year budget report on Wednesday. The good news is that the trend appears to a show a surplus at the end of the year, thanks to the tuition savings and other under budget trending lines.
But there are other areas in which the trend is the opposite and on Wednesday the School Committee honed in on understanding those lines.
The tuition expense is mostly driven in special education when the district is responsible for needs programming the school system is unable to provide. The budget line is one of much concern in every district because of unpredictability and high costs but has been particularly troublesome for Pittsfield as often it has been hit with unanticipated spending.
However, Behnke said the state has taken a new process to allocate costs for those students and had determined a couple the city had budgeted for were not actually the Pittsfield's responsibility.
Behnke is expecting to see a $475,000 surplus at the end of the year should the current trend continue. The deputy superintendent walked the School Committee through the entire budget pointing out various up and down trends and a number of issues raised alarm among the committee members.
In athletics, the school already overspent the budget by $20,000 and Behnke is anticipating that trend to lead to a $55,000 deficit at the end of the year. Superintendent Jason McCandless said is related to use of the turf field at Berkshire Community College.
The school not only has to a pay a fee to use the field but must also pay for state police officers to be in attendance - and the state police charge a service fee per officer when processing the payment.
"BCC does have expenses related to hosting us as the home football and lacrosse or soccer field. They have contracts to honor as well. They have people that must be there," McCandless said, understanding "full well the cost of running events."
McCandless said when the budget was crafted the district didn't know the cost structure. He anticipates that expense to decrease significantly when the school is holding fewer events there after the fields at Taconic High School are restored or created. But still, McCandless feels the turf field is still a great place to host the games.
"We continue to feel like BCC is a special experience for the kids, particularly once the grandstands and concession stands are put in place, it is a nice place to hold events," McCandless said.
Mayor Linda Tyer questioned the price BCC is charging the city. She said with the city contributing $200,000 toward that construction, the city should be getting a reduced cost - something City Councilor Earl Persip had pushed for during the debate over the release of those funds. Tyer said the School Committee should bring the issue to a conversation in hopes to save some funds.
"We ought to have some conversations with BCC. At least for our investment, could we receive a different rate," Tyer said.
McCandless said given his knowledge of hosting events he is "doubtful that they are even breaking even" and that the rate the city is being charged is "a much better rate than we'd get if we were a commercial entity." However, he said the school department would be happy to join the city council in those discussions.
Tyer also gave a shot over the bow regarding the school bus fleet. The payments for the bus fleet were coming out of the school budget and this last year, Tyer brought it back over to the city's side of the ledger where the rest of the capital purchases reside.
Behnke mentioned that after five years with the fleet, the expenses are growing and is trending to be over budget by the end of the year. Tyer, however, said those buses have to make it until three or four more years, when the current fleet is paid off.
"I don't want us buying a new fleet until we pay off the old fleet," Tyer said.
McCandless praised the mechanics who work on the bus and said he believes the district can get another three to four years out of the current fleet. But, the district doesn't want to see the buses get to the 11-year-old point that the previous fleet did.
"We have the good fortune to have a pretty incredible mechanic and mechanic assistant," McCandless said.
Electricity at the new Taconic is pricier than expected - though expectations had range widely. Electricity costs throughout the whole district are trending to be more than $175,000 over budget but the majority of the increase is tied to the new Taconic. Behnke said electric costs at the new Taconic is about double what it was at the former building.
Behnke and McCandless said the district worked with the architects to come up with an estimation but each time it varied widely. The new school's equipment and technology is much more energy efficient. But, there is also much more equipment and technology.
Employee separation costs are looking to be more than $100,000 over budget. Behnke said that is due to an unexpected amount of retirements. While the district has incentives in place to have staff notify of intent to retire by the end of December and most retirees do, retirements can still happen on short notice mid-year.
"We have a surprising number of people between that end of December deadline and when school is done where life changes and they have to," McCandless said.
Another budget line in the positive but of concern is substitutes. The district is on track to be close to $50,000 under budget on substitutes but school leaders aren't heralding that as a positive because it means they can't find enough.
"It's a challenge nationwide to find substitute teachers. It is hard work," McCandless said.
The superintendent said he recently visited Egremont School and a teacher had two classes worth of students for part of the day because another teacher had to leave on short notice and no substitutes were available.
The district had previously cut permanent substitutes but School Committee Daniel Elias suggested bring that back.
"That is definitely one of the items we are looking for in our budget preparation for next year," McCandless responded.
McCandless said the district has reached out to multiple temporary employment agencies with little luck. The district recently raised its pay to be one of the tops in the county but still have little luck. The next step could possibly be lowering the requirements to be able to tap into students at Berkshire Community College, McCandless said.
In a previous contract with the teacher's union, the district included incentives for excellent attendance among teachers by linking attendance to raises. But, McCandless said that "did not move the needle at all." Instead, the process merely lead to increased red tape with those missing work having to do more to document the medical reason and the district's human resources managing and keeping track of every absence. That provision was eliminated the most recent teacher's contract.
Another additional cost brought up by School Committee William Cameron is regarding migrating the PowerSchool program to a cloud-based server. The district had housed the server in hough but is making the switch at the cost of about $2,600 a year. Cameron raised questions regarding a number of budget items including some mentioned above.
Deputy Superintendent Joseph Curtis said that came about after the budget was set because the IT director left and Curtis was worried about keeping the server running without him. He added that eventually the server was going to need an upgrade and by switching to the cloud will help prevent a lack of access - otherwise if there was an internet problem at Mercer then the whole system wouldn't be accessible.
"They have much more of a backup system than we do. If our internet goes down, we could not access PowerSchool on our phones because we are hosting the server internally," Curtis said.
Some additional personnel added mid-year include another custodian at Taconic, a new dean at Taconic, and soon a proposal to add two more school nurses. All of those will hit the budget in various lines. Berkshire Gas was also approved for a rate increase which goes into effect in May. Behnke said those, among various other factors, have all been calculated into her end of year projection.
Tags: fiscal 2019, Pittsfield School Committee, school budget,
