NORTHFIELD — With budget cuts looming over the Pioneer Valley Regional School District, residents are becoming more vocal about how the district should begin to address its financial problem.
According to a list of possible cuts prepared by district administrators, the district would save $300,000 by closing Leyden’s Pearl Rhodes Elementary School, and $400,000 by closing Warwick Community School.
Abbi Pratt of Leyden read a letter at Thursday’s school committee meeting, which she said was signed by most parents of Pearl Rhodes students, saying that closing Pearl Rhodes “would cause lasting damage to our town and the school district as a whole.”
Instead of closing the school, the letter said, the School Committee should investigate a tax increase to the four member towns.
Deborah Potee of Northfield similarly advocated asking the towns for more money, whether it would come from reserves or tax increases.
But, said Bernardston Finance Committee Chairwoman Jane Dutcher, Bernardston only has $4,800 that would be available for such a request. If the requested amount were any greater than that — as it likely would be, given that the district’s deficit is roughly $1 million — the payment would require an override to Proposition 2½ to allow tax rates to increase by more than 2.5% over the previous year’s. In the past, Dutcher said, Bernardston voters have not approved similar overrides.
“I know the schools are important,” said Bernardston Selectboard Chairman Stanley Garland, “but there are other things that are important, too, and we’ve got to be able to afford them. I think that the closing of a school is something that we really need to look at.”
Bernardston’s tax rates are already the third highest in Franklin County, Garland added.
Of the two schools that could be closed, Leyden’s Pearl Rhodes would be the more likely candidate, said School Committee member Peggy Kaeppel, who is a resident of Leyden.
“We’re just being shortsighted if we don’t think we need to investigate closing at least Pearl Rhodes Elementary School as soon as it can be done,” Kaeppel said. “It’s unrealistic to even think about cutting music or the arts. … That school, it’s time for it to be mothballed, at least for now.”
Yet closing a school is a complicated process, said Fernard Dupere of Dupere Law Offices, the School Committee’s legal counsel.
The process is especially complicated, given that the district agreement guarantees that each town has its own elementary school. But, Dupere said, other districts in similar situations have done it, with varying results.
“The degree of the complication depends on the willingness of all involved to reach a common result,” he said.
“From my standpoint, I don’t believe that’s an appropriate discussion to be having for this coming school year,” said Jeff Wulfson, Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. “That’s a major decision for a community and a district to make with major implication, both financial and legal. It shouldn’t be rushed.”
Other information on the state of the deficit was also provided at last night’s meeting by Mary Jane Handy, director of accounts at the state Department of Revenue. In 2016, the “school lunch deficit” was $210,000. In 2017, there was a shortfall of about $400,000 in various operating expenses, plus about $45,000 more in the lunch deficit, for a total of about $640,000. And for 2018, Handy said, she anticipates another $400,000 in debt — bringing the total amount of missing money to roughly $1,061,000.
The main causes of these overexpenditures have been inadequate funding for district employees’ health and life insurance, inadequate assistance from the state for transportation costs and declining enrollment due to the closing of Vermont Yankee.
Wulfson emphasized that the district would need to be proactive in making adjustments to its budget and that the process would take more than one fiscal year.
“We do not suggest that you wait for us to come in with some magic answer that we do not have,” he said.