GREENFIELD – Following the Town Council’s narrow decision to cut its budget by 1 percent last week in an effort to try to save taxpayers money, the School Committee has been tasked with figuring out how to remove about $190,000 from its budget.
In a subcommittee meeting Tuesday afternoon members of the School Committee, including Mayor William Martin and Greenfield Superintendent Jordana Harper, grappled with different strategies of how to cut a budget that the mayor had already trimmed by around $500,000. The main question was should they cut 1 percent across the board or come up with a more sophisticated solution while trying to prevent further teacher cuts.
The Finance and Budget Subcommittee decided to suggest to the School Committee taking money from three revolving funds accounts to compensate for the 1 percent cut to the budget. In this proposed solution, there would be no additional administrative cuts or changes to the budget on top of what the superintendent already had to remove after the mayor’s slash.
The mayor suggested using $75,000 from a circuit breaker revolving funds, $75,000 from the special education funds and $40,000 from the school choice funds. The strategy would act as an essential band-aid to solve the 1 percent cut, by using up last resort funds. The subcommittee hopes that the town will then reimburse them with a free cash in the fall by the start of the school year.
“This financial strategy will result in no additional layoffs or services,” Martin said.
Some members of the subcommittee warned that this could forecast significant proposed cuts to staff in next year’s budget.
“What you did is you kicked the can until next year,” said member Tim Farrell about the position the Town Council has put the school in with the 1 percent budget cut.
Superintendent Jordana Harper said she was satisfied with balancing the mayor’s budget while keeping teachers in the classroom. Harper said the additional cut adds “a wrinkle and some uncertainty.”
“For sure (the 1 percent cut) has an impact on next year’s budget but what that is we don’t know,” about the potential influence of using revolving funds as an essential band-aid.