CBRSD Makes Cuts to Lower Town Assessments
DALTON, Mass. — School officials say reductions in the Central Berkshire Regional School District's budget will be felt, but remain optimistic that it will not prevent them from being "the best regional district in the state."
Throughout the budgeting season, officials said they strived to keep the seven member towns informed amid contractual increases outside their control and concerns with a state aid funding formula described as "remarkably wrong."
The initial budget was about a 9 percent increase, but with "strategic reductions" the district was able to cut that down to 2.99 percent, bringing the total budget to $37,740,005.
"This was no small feat," said Paul Farella, district's Finance Committee chair.
In earlier budget drafts, towns voiced concerns over significantly higher assessments, which ranged from approximately 7 to 15 percent, compared to prior years, when it was about 2 to 7 percent.
With the revised budget, projected net town assessments are:
- Becket for $2,859,205, an increase of 5.49 percent
- Cummington for $670,246, an increase of 5.11 percent
- Dalton for $10,106,445, an increase of 5.86 percent
- Hinsdale for $3,277,495, an increase of 10.54 percent
- Peru for $1,083,751, an increase of 6.11 percent
- Washington for $826,774, an increase of 6.64 percent
- Windsor for $995,438, an increase of 9.37 percent
"[The cuts] will be felt, but we believe that it is what is necessary for the time being to not overburden our towns while still being able to provide a quality education to our community," Farella said.
Delivering high-quality education while responsibly managing public funds in a district, which like many rural areas, faces financial constraints is a duty Superintendent Michael Henault said he takes very seriously.
"I don't think that this budget takes us away from our overall goals … [of making] Central Berkshire the best regional district in the state. And I still believe that. I don't think that this budget stops us from doing that," Henault said.
"I think it might slow us down a little bit, but I think we're improving the system in a way that is more sustainable and budgets are not going to be easier, moving into the future. And so this sets us up in a way that is sustainable for our students."
The budget protects what is most important to Central Berkshire, he said.
The district prioritized protecting core instruction from kindergarten through Grade 12, maintaining established intervention systems, and ensuring consistent programming, ensuring not to remove opportunities for students, Henault said.
"That was really important to me, and I know that was really important to our Finance Committee. We had had many hours of conversations about how to do those three things while also respecting the financial situations that our towns find themselves in right now, and to make sure that we found some middle ground," he said.
"Consequently, this budget also does include reductions, and reductions are never easy, because reductions are real people.
"We're reducing people's jobs that work really hard every day, doing a really complex job that is not getting any easier … wherever we could, we prioritize cutting things over people."
Starting from a conservative initial figure, the district cut $1,824,815 to arrive at a tentative budget of $38,459,202, then made additional reductions of $719,197, resulting in a final budget of $36,643,001.
The district reduced a high school English position, a special education teacher, a middle school engineering position, and a kindergarten teacher at Craneville Elementary School.
"To put those four cuts in perspective, the loss of the high school position will ultimately result in larger class sizes for Grades 11 and 12 but at this point, does not take away any of the opportunities for students to take Advanced Placement classes or things like that," Henault said.
Over the past eight months, the district has implemented a new special education system that prioritizes placing educators directly with the students who need them most, focusing on increased face-to-face instruction instead of administrative and clerical tasks.
To make the system work, the district anticipated moving some positions around and creating two new positions. However, the district had to cut the team chair position.
"We are going to move ahead with one of them, and we're going to pilot and do a slow roll out of the model and hopefully next year, be able to make it full and learn along the way before we scale it up fully," Henault said.
A middle school engineering teacher is retiring but the district still needs to find a way to fill the position because that is where students get taught the engineering standards that the district is required to teach.
"If we remember from our conversations throughout earlier this year, when we were talking about [Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System] scores, our eighth grade scores were the highest in the county," he said.
"So, we have to find a way to replace that position and through scheduling and moving resources, we do feel like we're going to be able to fill that position to do that."
Based on Dalton, Windsor, and Cummington enrollment numbers the district does not anticipate needing a fourth kindergarten teacher at Craneville, so the position was cut.
"That reduction at the elementary kindergarten level will not, at this point, affect class sizes and that was also done through a retirement," Henault said.
The district also will not fill a van and a driver position it hoped to add. Additionally, funding for the registered behavior technicians was removed.
"This is a this is a job that is requires supervision and as of right now, we've been unable to hire the board certified behavior analyst (BCBA) that we need in order to have those positions remain certified," he said.
"Part of that is salary — our salary right now for BCBAs is low, and BCBAs in the county are making more money by contracting out. So, until we're able to fill that BCBA position, we're going to be unable to have registered behavior technicians. So, that is also a cut."
Also reduced were the technology and property equipment budget, including the emergency server reserve fund, by transitioning to open-source software in some areas and streamlining monitoring software.
With 1,300 students using computers daily, the district had previously relied on multiple tools.
The district's investment in some "higher-quality" data analytics for math and ELA for kindergarten through Grade 10 paid off because now the district is able to reduce some of the other testing materials it was using.
"We've talked at the last budget about our computer hardware. With the cuts that we made here, effectively, a third of our teachers can get updated laptops. They're pushing 7 years old," Henault said.
"Our teachers need new laptops. We know that but [Technology Director Joseph] Stergis thinks he can get us through another year by replacing a third and is thankful that we're putting this into the operation budget because in the past, we've relied on rural aid and end-of-year money for our renewal cycles."
Tags: CBRSD_budget, fiscal 2027, school budget,
