WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock Regional School Committee on Thursday voted unanimously to slightly increase the assessment to the district's member towns from the figures in the draft budget presented by the administration.

 

The School Committee opted to lower the use of Mount Greylock's reserve account by $70,000 and, instead, increase by that amount the share of the fiscal year 2025 operating budget shared proportionally by Lanesborough and Williamstown taxpayers.

 

The budget prepared by the administration and presented to the School Committee at its annual public hearing on Thursday included $665,000 from the district's Excess and Deficiency account, the equivalent of a municipal free cash balance, an accrual of lower-than-anticipated expenses and higher-than-anticipated revenue in any given year.

 

That represented a 90 percent jump from the $350,000 allocated from E&D for fiscal year 2024, which ends on June 30. And, coupled with more robust use of the district's tuition revenue account (7 percent more in FY25) and School Choice revenue (3 percent more), the draw down on E&D is seen as a stopgap measure to mitigate a spike in FY25 expenses and an unsustainable budgeting strategy long term, administrators say.

 

The budget passed by the School Committee on Thursday continues to rely more heavily on reserves than in years past, but to a lesser extent than originally proposed.

 

Specifically, the budget the panel approved includes a total assessment to Williamstown of $13,775,336 (including capital and operating costs) and a total assessment to Lanesborough of $6,425,373.

 

As a percentage increase from the FY24 assessments, that translates to a 3.90 percent increase to Williamstown and a 3.38 percent increase to Lanesborough.

 

The draft budget presented by the administration on Thursday would have raised the assessments by 3.54 percent and 3.02 percent, respectively.

 

The originally proposed $315,000 increase in E&D spending happens to coincide with one specific driver of the overall operating budget increase, which is up from $26.2 million to $27.4 million in FY25. That driver is an unforeseen $300,000 rise in the cost for the district's out-of-district placement for students with special needs at the middle-high school.

 

School Committee member Carolyn Greene referenced that increase in her initial proposal to assess more money to the member towns and reduce the FY25 spending plan's reliance on the district's reserves.

 

"We're essentially taking $300,000 more from our reserves because we have a $300,000 extraordinary expense," Greene said. "This is not a curricular expense. This is not an expense we could have anticipated. It's a very important expense. It has to do with how we care for our kids, how we educate our kids.

 

"But it also could be looked at as a community expense. There are three partners at the table. There are two towns and the Mount Greylock Regional School District, which is a municipality, so let's just say there are three municipalities. Couldn't we split this extraordinary cost amongst us evenly?"

 

Greene initially proposed increasing the assessment to the two towns by $100,000, representing one third of the extraordinary expense. She then said the district could be aggressive, absorbing half of the expense ($150,000) and splitting the remainder between the two member towns.

 

Superintendent Jason McCandless noted that one issue to be considered is how one thinks about the term "extraordinary." An obvious example would be a failed or failing boiler, a problem that the district and Town of Lanesborough addressed at its elementary school a couple of years ago.

 

"At Mount Greylock Regional School, we're looking at 'extraordinary costs' that we know, for the most part, will occur in fiscal '25, fiscal '26, fiscal '27, fiscal '28," McCandless said. "We're talking about, in some of these cases, sixth-graders coming into seventh, seventh-graders coming into eighth.

 

"From a town perspective, an extraordinary expense is, 'this fire engine failed.' "

 

McCandless and Assistant Superintendent Joseph Bergeron, who functions as the district's business manager, presented the FY25 spending plan as one that responds to the calls from town officials for Mount Greylock to use its reserves before sending assessments that will drive up the property tax levy even more. But at the same time, McCandless and Bergeron said that officials in both town halls understand that the district's reserves are not bottomless and that higher assessments will be needed in the future in order to maintain programming at the district's three schools.

 

"We have talked about it," Greene said. "They know. They know what position we're in. [Raising the assessment in FY25] would be a more gradual approach. It would spread the risks this year and maybe even we could find ways collectively to improve things for the next year. It buys everyone a little more time. Rather than keeping [the assessment increase] at 3 percent and then jumping to 5 and 6 percent."

 

Bergeron provided the committee with feedback on how the assessments to the towns would be impacted with different reductions in the E&D allocation.

 

"I feel like there's a number between where we are now [the administration's budget] and the sticker shock that we do not want to bring to the towns but … avoids a drastic increase in ask next year, which is not only potentially possible but likely," Curtis Elfenbein said. "Even if it's — and I don't want to use the word 'gesture,' here — but even if it's the gesture of $50,000 less and what that apportionment looks like, it's the stark reminder that the landscape of funding our schools … we're going to be looking for more. We can't do 3 percent [assessment increases] every year they want to do 3 percent, is what I'm saying, not to be brusque about it.

 

"I do feel like pushing a little bit now will make the pushing I fear we'll need to do next year less painful and less surprising both for the [town] administrations and the [taxpayers]."

 

After several minutes of discussion, the committee landed on the $70,000 reduction in the E&D transfer that it voted to move forward for the FY25 budget.

 

That budget will be presented to the Williamstown Finance Committee on Wednesday, March 20, and to the Lanesborough Fin Comm and Select Board in a joint meeting of the bodies on March 25. Ultimately, voters in each member town have the final say on the assessment at their respective town meetings later in the spring.

 

In the meantime, the district administration is preparing for life in increasingly different budget environments down the road.

 

In addition to the staff reductions — by attrition — included in FY25 budget, McCandless on Thursday talked about other potential belt-tightening measures on the horizon.

 

"We've been working for several weeks, maybe even a couple of months really digging into, as we kind of do year round, particularly the middle and high school schedule around what … electives and what is being used well but perhaps not being used as efficiently," McCandless said.

 

Among the things on the table, according to McCandless, are some foreign language offerings, some core classes, software subscriptions that are "nice to have, but we don't have to have" and the late buses for students participating in after school activities — the last an expense that generated a lot of discussion 10 years ago.

 

"We're just really trying to think about how do we keep the core program intact and do things that are going to hurt but not mutilate," McCandless said.

 

In response to a question from School Committee member Julia Bowen, McCandless said the district might implement "very light changes" to the Mount Greylock Regional School schedule for the 2024-25 academic year (also known as FY25).

 

"Unlike larger forms of government that can keep kicking the can down the road … we have to own the can at some point," McCandless said.

 

No members of the public chose to address the School Committee during the public hearing.