NORTHFIELD — Pioneer teachers were holding signs on the corner of routes 10 and 63 (Main Street) on Sunday, publicizing their frustrations with the School Committee and Superintendent Ruth Miller.
“It’s like a shell game with them, moving the money around,” said Tracy Derrig, a teacher at Pioneer Valley Regional School. “It’s in this line; no, it’s in that line; no, we consolidated lines. No one ever saw what the math was. Now here we are at the eleventh hour of the school year and a million dollars in the hole.”
Extensive layoffs and potential school closures are expected after an emergency meeting of the Pioneer Valley Regional School Committee last Thursday, where it was revealed that, according to an audit conducted the prior week by the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, the district will be at a deficit of nearly a million dollars by the end of July.
“It’s like a disaster happened,” said Aimee Brown, in her 20th year as a teacher at PVRS. “No one really saw it coming — nothing leading up to these profound problems.”
The School Committee voted unanimously to seek financial oversight from the state, and instructed administrators to plan to reduce at least $400,000 from the budget for the coming school year. Those plans are to be reviewed at the next School Committee meeting, Thursday at 7 p.m. at Pioneer Valley Regional School.
Ariel LaReau, a teacher at PVRS and president of the Pioneer Valley Regional Education Association, said the teachers demonstrating on Sunday blamed the “horrifying crescendo” of the district’s financial problems on mismanagement from Superintendent Miller, and on the School Committee for not holding Miller accountable.
“At this point she (Miller) is done, she’s gone, she’s gonna get away with it,” LaReau said. Miller has been planning to leave her job in the Pioneer district since before the budget issue escalated. Her last day is June 30. Efforts to reach her on Sunday were unsuccessful.
“We need a new school committee that knows what’s going on, that pays attention, that wants our schools to exist,” LaReau said.
When reached Sunday after the demonstration — which spanned from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. — School Committee chairwoman Pat Shearer spoke in support of the teachers.
“I think the teachers understand what the problem is more than we realize they do,” she said. “The teachers are a smart bunch of people who are very dedicated to making our kids the best educated kids they can be. They are doing what they can do.”
For the past two weeks, a subcommittee of the School Committee has been interviewing candidates for a new superintendent. Shearer, who is also on the superintendent subcommittee, has said the subcommittee will select two applicants for the whole committee to interview and vote on at the next School Committee meeting.
Teachers on Sunday were also collecting donations from passing drivers. LaReau said the money will be donated to the School Committee with instructions that it be used to help pay for substitute teachers. By 1 p.m., they had collected $400.
District administrators drastically reduced spending on substitute teachers two weeks ago as an effort to avoid overspending the current year’s budget.
Principals were instructed to seek creative alternatives to using substitutes. At PVRS, classes are being pooled into large study hall sessions where, PVRS student Dana McRae said, “you basically sit there for a block and don’t do anything.”
When they’re available, teachers say they are being asked to cover classes outside of their subject area.
“I had a calculus class in the chorus room,” McRae said. “The chorus teacher doesn’t know how to teach calculus.”
Some teachers said they might plan another demonstration next weekend in Bernardston.
“There needs to be accountability,” Brown said. “There needs to be a change to be able to manage the funds that these towns so kindly and generously vote in to support our schools.”
Contact Max Marcus
at: mmarcus@recorder.com