NORTHFIELD — More than a month after the last Pioneer Valley Regional School District Committee meeting, members of the public now have answers to some of their most frequently asked questions.
Superintendent Ruth Miller posted on the Pioneer Valley Regional School District’s website outlining what became of a reported $477,487 budget shortfall and whether exit interviews had been conducted with resigning Pioneer employees.
Miller came under fire from concerned parents and faculty at the June 23 committee meeting and earlier as a result of an article published by The Recorder on Sept. 14, 2015, which stated Miller, going in her first year, had discovered a significant budget deficit.
Miller said she never used those words to describe the district’s financial situation and the district was not in financial danger. Rather, money had been allotted in different accounts than she had originally expected.
“In the past, (the district) put all the expenses into the general fund, but that’s not the way it’s supposed to be done,” she said in a phone interview.
The district operates two separate pools of money: a general fund and a School Choice revolving fund. The School Choice fund, which comes from tuition from out-of-district students, should not be included in the budget presented to the district’s towns, she said, though former superintendents have done so. Not factoring in the School Choice fund would cause it to appear like the district was short on money.
“I want our account to line up with the requirements of the Department of Education,” Miller said. “That’s the way you’re supposed to do it.”
Miller said she also included facets in the budget that the previous superintendent had not.
“It was just a little murky,” Miller said. “What was unclear was did we have the right amount of expenses coming out and did those expenses balance what the town was going to give us.”
Another issue arose because Miller could not factor in anticipated grant funding at the time of the budget’s completion.
“We did not have new grant figures when we completed the budget,” Miller explained. “We always get a special education grant that comes in at around $400,000 … We always know we’re going to get the grant, so we should be fine, but we didn’t know the number at that point.”
The district also regularly receives a Title I grant and an early education grant, Miller continued. However, because grant funding has declined significantly in the past five years, it has become more difficult for administrators to anticipate funding and Miller did not want to incorrectly account for grants.
Miller said Daniel Haynes of Scanlon & Associates completed an audit of the district and found her calculations made sense.
“I spent many hours on understanding the budget, revenues and projected expenses,” Miller said on the district’s website. “I reviewed the auditor’s recommendations and implemented many of them.”
Some of Haynes’ recommendations included separating the School Choice revolving fund from the budget presented to the towns and working to increase the district’s reserves, which have been decreasing each year.
“I made it clear (to the School Committee) … that we would be in OK shape this fiscal year,” Miller said on the website. “But we need to tighten our spending and find inefficiencies. There is just not enough in reserve to continue spending the way we have been able to in the past.”
One problem, Miller said, is the school lunch fund.
“The school lunch fund is $198,000 in the hole,” she said. “Essentially, we don’t have any reserves. Any amount of money we had left over last year, we needed to apply that to the school lunch fund and it’s still in the negative.”
“Hopefully, at the end of this year, we might be able to get rid of that in its entirety,” she said. Miller has a goal for the district to eventually have 5 percent of its budget in reserve.
Miller said the auditor also recommended enhancing the district’s internal controls in financial reporting.
“My staff and I sat down and we went through every different control that we need and rewrote our control manual,” she said. Such protocols would control the district’s transactions and eliminate fraud.
On the district website, Miller wrote that “exit interviews have been done for some, but not all of the staff that have left the district.”
Faculty, parents and students had asked that exit interviews be conducted with departing staff members after several announced their resignations from the high school. Pioneer Principal Bill Wehrli, Assistant Principal — and then Acting Principal — Mike Duprey, Computer Network Manager Mike Holloway and Director of Special Education Sharon Jones are four of the long-term staff members to leave the school since fall 2015.
“I think it would appropriate for teachers to do exit interviews with their principals, for administrators to interview with me,” Miller said. “The exit interviews would be conducted by their direct supervisors.”
There is currently no format for exit interviews within the district, Miller said, but she intends to have administrators create a process for conducting exit interviews with all staff who resign or retire.