Smaller towns 'fix' school budget

By Bob Dunn
Staff Writer

Published on May 11, 2007

In an unusual scenario, the three small towns that belong to the Amherst Regional School District have determined Amherst's share of next year's school costs.

Town Meetings in Leverett, Pelham and Shutesbury all approved 3 percent increases in their share of the regional school budget.

Amherst must now submit a budget for the regional schools that also reflects a 3 percent increase over the current year, rather than the 1 percent it was considering after voters defeated a property tax override and spending plan last week.

The regional agreement among the four towns states that if three of them approve an increase in the regional budget, the fourth is bound by the same percentage increase.

Sticking to the proposed 1 percent budget increase would have meant a second mandatory study hall for high school students, teacher and staff layoffs and other department-wide cuts.

The current Amherst Regional budget is $27 million. A 1 percent budget increase would have meant $1.3 million in cuts in staff and services due to rising health care and labor costs. With the increase in funding because of the votes by Leverett, Pelham, and Shutesbury, about $1 million in cuts will still be needed.

Voters at Pelham's Town Meeting Saturday approved an increase of 3 percent to the town's regional school assessment. Pelham School Committee Chairman Michael Hussin said Pelham's extra share comes to $28,000. Pelham voted on Saturday to fund a 1 percent increase, or $9,000, and the remaining $19,000 will likely come from state Chapter 70 education aid and Pelham's school choice reserve funds, Hussin said.

At its annual Town Meeting, Leverett voted to increase its portion of the regional school budget by 2.96 percent to a total of $1.15 million. That amount reflects an increase of $33,099.

Shutesbury Town Meeting also approved funding for a 3 percent increase in its regional assessment over last year, providing $1.47 million for the regional budget.

In years past, it had been the smaller towns in the region, like Pelham, which had to go along with a budget that they might otherwise not have voted for, given the choice, according to Amherst Regional School Committee Chairwoman Elaine Brighty.

Hussin agreed that this is an unusual position for Pelham and the other two towns to be in.

Brighty said the forced increase in regional funding is educationally important for the district because it will eliminate the need for a second mandatory study hall for students at the high school and would allow the region to maintain some teaching positions in an effort to keep class sizes down.

"This is marvelous for the region," Brighty said.

Brighty noted that Leverett passed its budget three days before Amherst's $2.5 million override measure was defeated at the polls.

The contribution of each town to the regional budget is based on the number of students each sends to Amherst Regional middle and high schools.

The state provides a different formula that could be used to determine each town's contributions, if the towns elected to use it, Brighty said. But that formula is much more complicated and would cost the smaller towns more money each year than the current per-pupil assessment, she said.

A posting on the Amherst Parent Coalition email list server suggested abandoning the current method as a cost-saving measure when it comes up for a vote of approval at Amherst Town Meeting.

Brighty said while it's Town Meeting's right, because all four towns are involved and their budgets have been constructed using the per-pupil method, it would throw the entire budget process into chaos.

"And I do mean chaos," Brighty said.