NORTHFIELD — Teachers will be in the streets of Northfield on Sunday to draw attention to the Pioneer Valley Regional School Committee’s dysfunction and the mismanagement by district administrators.
“We’re doing this instead of picketing,” said Ariel LaReau, president of the Pioneer Valley Regional Education Association (the teachers’ union). “We want to be proactive and positive.”
Teachers will be stationed along Main Street from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. with signs urging residents to push the School Committee to take responsibility for the district’s financial problems.
“I can understand why they’re doing it,” said Pat Shearer, School Committee chairwoman. Shearer had been unaware that teachers had planned a demonstration when asked about it on Friday.
At an emergency committee meeting on Thursday, it was revealed that the state Department of Revenue had audited the district and found that it’s facing a $1 million deficit by the end of July. In light of this, the committee decided unanimously to seek financial advice from the state, which may include oversight from a state financial review board.
Two of the four member towns have already approved the district’s requested budget for fiscal year 2019: $14,077,538, essentially level-funded with the current year’s budget, but with a “buffer” of an extra $10,000.
Faced with the grim deficit, and worried about next year’s spending, the committee has asked administrators to develop plans to cut between $400,000 and $1 million in next year’s budget in order to begin addressing the deficit, and to present those plans when the committee meets Thursday at PVRS. These plans will most likely include extensive layoffs and closure of schools, said the committee’s attorney Russell Dupere.
Ruth Miller, the district’s superintendent and business manager, did not attend Thursday’s meeting and was unavailable for comment on Friday. Miller is leaving the district at the end of the school year. A subcommittee of the School Committee is seeking an interim superintendent to replace Miller. The subcommittee expects to have two candidates ready for the whole committee to vote on at the Thursday meeting.
“We hope to shed some light on the dire budget circumstances we are dealing with, and have been for some time now in this school district,” said Pioneer Valley Regional School art teacher Tracy Derrig. “Teachers and students have bore the brunt of fiscal mismanagement here.”
Bernardston’s Hillside Pizza will donate lunch for school staff participating in the demonstration on Sunday, Derrig said.
The teacher’s union is also collecting donations to help fund the substitute teacher program at Pioneer Valley Regional School, which has been drastically reduced since the beginning of May in administrators’ efforts to avoid overspending their budget for the current school year.
Money toward the cause can be donated at: gofundme.com/pvrea-sub-crisis-committee.