NORTHFIELD — “Pioneer Valley Regional School District finds itself in the perfect storm,” wrote Pioneer Valley Regional School District Superintendent Ruth Miller in a letter May 22.
The storm hit at the School Committee’s May 17 emergency meeting when School Committee Chairwoman Pat Shearer shared the results of a recent audit, according to which Pioneer Valley Regional School District is projected to be at a deficit of roughly $1 million by the end of July. On Wednesday, the School Committee must vote on what cuts it will make from the coming year’s budget to begin correcting that deficit. The committee had planned to make its decisions in a vote at its most recent meeting on May 24, but postponed. This time, the deadline is probably real: Teachers’ contracts need to be renewed, or not, by Friday, June 1.
At the May 17 meeting, the School Committee instructed administrators to come up with a list of cuts from next school year’s budget for the committee to review.
The administrators’ proposed cuts — “none of which,” Healy said at the May 24 meeting, “we recommend as educationally sound or in the best interest of teaching and learning” — include reducing or even completely cutting PVRS sports, consolidating or cutting special curricular programs like art and music, cutting preschool, moving 6th grade to PVRS and closing Warwick Community School or Leyden’s Pearl Rhodes Elementary or both.
“Our school is enviable by anyone’s standards,” wrote Warwick resident Jennifer Core in an email to fellow residents, pleading that it would be shortsighted to close the school, and accusing Warwick Town Coordinator David Young, who is on the School Committee, of “attempting to push through a vote on closing the Warwick Community School.”
“How do I feel about closing Warwick’s school?” Young said. “Awful.”
But Warwick Community School may just be too expensive to run, Young said. According to school district treasurer Tanya Gaylord’s estimates, Warwick and Leyden’s elementary schools respectively cost about $22,750 and $24,600 per student. Young said in his own calculations, Warwick Community School’s cost per-pupil is closer to $32,000. Statewide, the average per-pupil cost is about $15,500, according to the Department of Education’s expenditure report of September 2017. In Gaylord’s calculations, Bernardston and Northfield’s elementary schools cost about $16,500 per student, and Pioneer Valley Regional School is about $17,500.
“Over the past decade, there have been changes in the Massachusetts education system that have put Massachusetts at the top in the country and competitive in the world,” Miller wrote. “All of this comes with a cost. … We are the ones that have to fulfill all of the required mandates at a time when there are fewer students and less resources.”
Miller cited declining enrollment and the state’s failure to properly reimburse the district’s transportation costs as the main causes of the deficit. Similarly, at the May 17 meeting, the School Committee’s attorney Russell Dupere repeatedly made the point that the district is now dealing with a years-old structural problem: the amount of money being spent on each school is incommensurate with the number of students.
“Pioneer Valley Regional School District finds itself in a position where they have to decide if they need to close a school or two,” Miller wrote, “and have their kindergarten and elementary school students ride a bus to school and home that will take a minimum of 90 minutes. This may be financially prudent in the short term, but what comes next? Closure of the remaining two elementary schools? There is a need in Western Mass that is unique and demands a unique solution.”
The following is the list of cuts proposed by the district’s administrators at the request of the School Committee. The School Committee will make its decisions at its meeting on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. at Pioneer Valley Regional School.
Staff reductions:
eliminate 1 teacher at NES
eliminate 1 teacher at BES
eliminate 1 teacher and reduce some offerings in material tech engineering/architecture at PVRS
consolidate foods/nutrition and health positions at PVRS
reduce admin assistant
reduce custodian
Restructuring options:
cut preschool
move sixth grade to PVRS
Extracurriculars:
reduce number of sports or number of teams epr sport in athletic programs at PVRS
eliminate sports at PVRS
reduce budget support for after school clubs by half
eliminate all budget support for after school clubs
eliminate late busses
eliminate elementary field trip support for non-academic and out-of-district trips
Specials (art, music, PE, technology):
consolidate art and music and PE positions at the elementary schools
consolidate are and music and PE positions at the elementary schools and reduce to four days per week
consolidate instrumental music instruction 5-12
consolidate vocal and instrumental music at elementary level
eliminate elementary technology education
cut all specials at elementary level
School closures:
close Pearl Rhodes Elementary
close Warwick Community School