Pittsfield City Council OKs $67M School District Budget Appropriation
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The City Council on Monday night passed a $67,311,700 appropriation for the fiscal 2022 school budget in an 8-1 vote with only Ward 7 Councilor Anthony Maffuccio opposed.
President Peter Marchetti was absent and Ward 2 Councilor Kevin Morandi abstained.
The spending plan in total is $67,931,700, which is a 4.33 percent or $2,818,000 increase from the FY21 budget of $65,113,700. The appropriation is a 4.37 percent increase from FY21.
The School Committee approved the overall budget in late April with little alteration.
Within the $2,818,000 increase is $1,600,000 in contractual obligations, $70,000 in career and technical aid, $338,000 in elementary literacy and enrollment, $720,000 for a districtwide prekindergarden program, $40,000 to in repurposing requests from Crosby and Eagle academies, and $50,000 for the addition of a diversity, equity, and inclusion officer.
There is also $620,000 in tuition.
"We have operated as a school district for well over a year now in a time where there's been no precedent, no guide, no previous direction to follow," Superintendant Joseph Curtis said. "Our students and families have moved through our school year, extending a great deal of trust to the superintendent, the principals, teachers, and support and school sports support staff. They have endured many learning models and schedule changes have had to build relationships over video. complete assignments digitally, all without the supports our students have grown accustomed to in a traditional school setting."
He identified three primary focus areas of the 2021 District Improvement Plan: literacy, engagement, and inclusivity.
Curtis also identified actions and plans that need to be incorporated into a long-term strategic plan for the district that includes diversifying the workforce, improving retention practices including retaining staff with a more competitive salary structure, exit interviews, and analyzing practices.
He revealed that the school is committed to funding an outside provider to conduct a full equity audit and when the findings are released, an equity task force will be formed.
The $720,000 appropriation supports additional staffing to provide prekindergarten at every elementary school with each having at least one integrated pre-K classroom with special education and typical peer students. Each of those classrooms will be staffed with a special education teacher, general education teacher, and paraprofessional.
Some $70,000 of the budget dedicated to CTE (Career and Technical Education) will support the expanding program at Taconic High School. A new Information Support Services and Networking program will be available to students and an additional auto body teacher will be added.
A portion of the $1,600,000 in contractual obligations is attributed to the addition of elementary teachers and an assistant principal of teaching and learning at Conte Community School.
Curtis explained that the district looks to restore three classroom teachers at Conte, Williams, and Crosby elementary schools because the enrollment projections for FY22 indicate that if they do not add those positions, classrooms would be too large.
"Both the Eagle Academy and Crosby Academy have been officially approved as day programs by the state," Curtis said in regard to the $40,000 for repurposing in the academies.
"Two years ago, we added the middle school students to the Eagle Academy program and we now need to adjust the current structure, allowing for greater student and family support. You can see that there are some positions being reprioritized with an addition of a dean of students and adding back an additional school adjustment counselor. There's also need for some clerical support that a secretary will provide and that Secretary will be providing support at both Crosby and Eagle."
The district will receive $49,660,585 in Chapter 70 state education aid in FY22, a $1,497,516 increase from this year. Comparably, from FY20 to FY21 there was a significantly smaller increase of $477,007.
The council debated this budget for about three hours. Popular areas of conversation were the addition of pre-K, staff and student retention, teacher wages, and the equity audit.
Councilor at Large Earl Persip III spoke on the retention rate discrepancies within Pittsfield schools. As a district, PPS is at 87.2 percent in 2021, which is right around the state average of 88.4 percent but there are schools with percentages in the 60s and 50s that concerned Persip.
"I really think that we need to address this retention problem with students, and staff, and we've been talking about it for years. And I haven't heard of the answer or a solution," he said.
Curtis was honest in his response, admitting that the district has not maintained exit interviews and cannot identify trends for staff leaving. This is something he aims to correct.
"We're speaking to our survey partner provider tomorrow and that will be up and running for June 1 on," he said. "So we've had these survey questions and what it asks looked at by a number of people, just to really ensure that we're asking questions that we can receive data from, and, again, identify patterns and trends over time."
Assistant Superintendent Kristen Behnke noted that retirement plays into these numbers as well.
Maffuccio queried Curtis on the steps that are being taken to mitigate out-of-school transfers and expressed concerns for teachers who are "underpaid."
Curtis said that since 2006, there has been no "true data collection" on the topic, but the district is starting a school choice survey study in June that will reflect on those choices.
"There are families that make a choice to not attend the Pittsfield Public Schools that never attend the Pittsfield Public Schools, there are families that attend our schools in elementary, and then for their own reasons, exit in middle school, and then rejoin us back in high school," he said. "And so, over the years without that data collection, I think anything that I would guess would be just that."
Ultimately, Maffuccio said he "does not like" the budget before him and would not support it until there is an organizational audit of the school department. Maffuccio also opposed the $720,000 price tag on pre-K expansion.
Ward 1 Councilor Helen Moon raised concerns about the enrollment of pre-K, which is a non-tuition program on a first-come, first-serve basis.
"I'm concerned that if it's a first-come, first-serve basis, there might be people who cannot get into the program based on timing," she said. "So then if there's no more room left, then do they go to a tuition-based program? I guess that's my concern. But I guess we'll see in the coming year, that kind of enrollment will be like."
Behnke added that there are also vouchers for day care so that families participating in this program can do so at no cost to them based on their income.
Moon pointed out the statistics that 39 percent of the school children are of color and 60 percent are white.
"One of the things that I know, sitting on the board for the Berkshire Immigrant Center, is that immigrants are the only growing population in Berkshire County, and so it is interesting to see this graph that leaves out that we do have a significant portion of our student body that are kids of color and I expect that number to rise as the years come," she said, moving on to question the district's statistics for staff.
Curtis said the district's employees in 2016 were 97.1 percent white, and in 2020, they were 92.5 percent white. Data that is about four weeks old revealed that in 2021, the district hired 8.8 percent white people and 11.2 percent people of color.
"Each year we've improved our percentage of hiring non-white employees," he added.
Unfortunately, the staff retention rate for non-white employees has shown to be "dramatically less" than white employees. Curtis said the recently hired cultural competency coach is having these conversations and the equity audit will give them more information on the topic.
"I think it's great that you are doing an audit," Moon said. "I find that a lot of places jump into work without realizing what kind of work needs to be done, or an assessment of where people are to move forward, so we don't even know how people feel or understand equity or diversity and inclusion in our spaces and we try to move forward from there, and that doesn't really lend itself to bringing people along in the process."
Persip spoke once more at the meeting to emphasize the importance of adding more custodial staff to the $120.8 million Taconic High School that was completed in 2018.
"This is the kind of thing that I think hurt us in the long run, shorting out on custodians and people that actually take care of the buildings," he said. "This is what we talked about when we built this building, how we were going to take care of it, and we only added one extra person to take care of this multi-million dollar school that we all talked about."
Persip said if he is on the council next year, he wants to see the number of custodial staff increased at Taconic.
| Account Name | 2019 Approval | 2020 Approval | 2021 Approval | 2022 Approval |
| Administration | 1,621,233 | 1,603,449 | 1,609,771 | 1,711,787 |
| Instructional | 47,428,006 | 50,256,457 | 49,849,658 | 52,335,979 |
| Other School Services (Nurses, Bus Operations) | 3,037,370 | 3,442,389 | 3,645,177 | 3,779,856 |
| Operations and Maintenance (Technology and Custodial) | 5,477,279 | 5,767,459 | 5,955,499 | 6,033,765 |
| Fixed Costs | 404,765 | 309,004 | 317,235 | 329,410 |
| Adult Learning | 0 | 68,074 | 68,074 | 68,074 |
| Acquisition of Fixed Assets | 0 | 97,682 | 97,682 | 102,225 |
| Tuition Payments | 3,144,216 | 3,569,186 | 3,570,604 | 3,570,604 |
| TOTAL | 61,112,869 | 65,113,700 | 65,113,700 | 67,931,700 |
| FUNDING SOURCES | ||||
| City Council Appropriation | 60,492,869 | 63,481,700 | 64,493,700 | 67,311,700 |
| School Choice Revenues | 589,012 | 597,302 | 570,000 | 570,000 |
| Richmond Tuition Revenues | 30,988 | 22,698 | 50,000 | 50,000 |
| Vocational Tuition Revolving Account | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Subtotal Tuition Revolving | 620,000 | 620,000 | 620,000 | 620,000 |
| TOTAL, ALL FUNDING SOURCES | 61,112,869 | 64,101,700 | 65,113,700 | 67,931,700 |
Tags: fiscal 2022, pittsfield_budget, school budget,
