Pittsfield Schools Schedule Morningside, Budget Hearings This Week
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The School Committee will hold another public hearing for the potential closure of Morningside Community School.
On Thursday, April 9, at 6 p.m., community members will have the chance to give feedback in the Reid Middle School library. Last month, the Pittsfield Public Schools announced the possible closure of Morningside, which serves elementary grades, for the 2026-2027 school year and redistribution of its students to other city schools.
In the last couple of weeks, the district has solicited input from employees and community members through meetings at the school.
Morningside Community School was built in the mid-1970s with an open classroom concept. Morningside serves about 374 students and has a 7 percent accountability score, outperformed by 93 percent of the state.
For fiscal year 2027, the district has allocated about $5.2 million for the school. The committee has also requested a version of the proposed $87.2 million district budget with Morningside closed.
Pittsfield has another open concept school, Conte Community School, that is planned to consolidate with Crosby Elementary School, and possibly Stearns Elementary School, in a new building on the Crosby site by 2030. The status of the project's owner's project manager will be discussed on Tuesday, April 7, at 5 p.m. at Taconic High School during the School Building Needs Commission meeting.
That leaves the school officials wondering if Morningside students could have better educational outcomes if resources followed them to other nearby schools. Interim Superintendent Latifah Phillips has stressed that a decision has not yet been made.
Considerations for the school’s closure include: The feasibility of the facility to provide a conducive teaching and learning environment with an open campus design, the funding allocation needed to ensure Morningside students can have equitable learning opportunities, and declining enrollment across Pittsfield elementary schools.
At the first community meeting, parents expressed concerns over the availability of after-school and before-school programs at the other schools, specifically the "Kids Club," transportation, maintaining diversity if children are dispersed to different schools, and more.
The need for consistent before and after-school care, summer meals, continued prekindergarten, and continued bilingual services was heard throughout other hearings.
On Monday, April 6, there will be a special meeting of the Pittsfield Public School Committee to discuss the fiscal year 2027 budget at City Hall.
The proposed budget for Pittsfield Public Schools in fiscal year 2027 is $86,855,061, with $68,886,061 in Chapter 70 funding and $18 million from the city. It is a modest, $404,500 increase over FY26, and the administration needed to reduce nearly $4.4 million to achieve a level service-funded budget.
The Fair Student Funding model was used to prepare the spending plan, which allocates resources to schools based on students' needs, rather than solely historical staffing patterns or prior year budgets.
During the last School Committee meeting, the Pittsfield High School community argued that $653,000 would be too much of a burden for the school to bear. Teachers, former students, and the school’s student representative spoke in support of their "Home Under the Dome" during public comment.
PHS has a proposed FY27 budget of around $8.1 million, and would see a reduction of seven teachers (plus one teacher of deportment) and an assistant principal of teaching and learning, and a guidance counselor repurposed across the district.
The administration said that after "right-sizing" the classrooms, there were initially 14 teacher reductions proposed for PHS.
The district is gathering information for a potential statement of interest to the Massachusetts School Building Authority for repairs to the decade-old high school, with a deadline of April 17.
Tags: fiscal 2027, Pittsfield Public Schools, school budget,
