GREENFIELD — School Committee members voted unanimously Monday to accept Superintendent Christine DeBarge’s proposed $21.25 million budget for fiscal year 2023, representing a 7.72%, or approximately $1.5 million increase over the current fiscal year.
The increase to the budget, which will now come before City Council, is largely due to salaries, as well as special education costs and contractual services, DeBarge said.
“One of the biggest pieces I know School Committee has talked about since I’ve been here is that our staff salaries are not as competitive as some of the other school districts around us,” she said. “A few years ago, there was a collective bargaining agreement that settled, and the retroactive payments were addressed through the School Choice fund. This fiscal year 2023 budget is the culmination of those salary increases, for the first time built into the budget.”
She said the proposed budget is in part a result of moving staff around, and adjusting the numbers to reflect where staff were actually working at the time of the budget’s creation.
In terms of three areas of focus considered when creating the budget, DeBarge identified social-emotional learning priorities, academic improvement priorities and special education priorities.
She noted the increase in social work and school counseling staff this year that she is proposing to maintain in the upcoming fiscal year; and while the position hasn’t been filled, DeBarge said she is optimistic about filling the director of behavioral services position. The school district also plans to maintain the newly created social justice and equity coordinator.
As for her academic improvement priorities, DeBarge said the coach interventionist positions that were added this year are to be maintained in the upcoming year, per the proposed budget. Additionally, two new positions are included in the budget for health/physical education and elective offerings.
The proposed budget also prioritizes buying math materials that are being piloted at the elementary level.
“We have built in the purchase of necessary instructional supplies into the local budget,” she said. “Those have not always been included in the budget and instead, in some areas, were dependent on fundraising or parent donations to provide.”
Additionally, the district will soon be in need of replacing technology.
“Most, if not all of our devices, will be coming to end of life in the next year or two,” DeBarge noted.
And finally, in the realm of special education costs, the superintendent is proposing the addition of two new positions, one at the high school and one at the middle school.
“These are to meet identified needs of our students,” DeBarge said.
Following a presentation of the budget on Monday, School Committee member Glenn Johnson-Mussad said it seemed like a significant portion of the process was “cleaning up the budget” and categorizing line items in a way that aligns best with the state.
“That is some of what we went through in the budget,” DeBarge replied. “If things are not in categories where they belong, so to speak, it makes it challenging to monitor how we’re spending, because I’m looking at lines that don’t reflect what’s in the category.”
During the public comment portion of the meeting, resident Andrew Varnon thanked DeBarge for addressing the need to replace technology.
“It’s very important that technology should be replaced proactively and more aggressively, rather than waiting for terms such as ‘end of life,’” he said. “I very much appreciate that, and I’ve been waiting seven years to hear that in Greenfield.”
Resident Doug Selwyn said he was concerned about the ratio of teachers to students in the schools, and emphasized the importance of offering a pay that attracts and retains staff, especially instructional assistants.
“I think if we want good folks coming into our schools, we have to be willing to pay,” he said. “What we’re asking of our (instructional assistants) and what we pay them doesn’t match.”
The increase in the budget itself was a cause of concern for some residents, including Donna Festinger.
“People that live in Greenfield are having a hard time with taxes as it is,” Festinger commented at Monday’s meeting.
Festinger was curious to know the specifics involved in emphasizing social-emotional learning over academics, such as math and reading. She was also curious to hear more about the “equity focus” on resources, curriculum and professional development that DeBarge spoke to at the start of her budget presentation.
“The social and emotional education could take place at home or at church, or in other areas,” she argued. “I know some students need some instruction in that, but I’m curious as to what that entails.”
Later in the meeting, DeBarge said that in regards to social-emotional learning, professional development on the topics of race and equity is about working with staff around strategies to support students who have trauma.
“Creating our social-emotional learning curriculum helps to establish, basically, what tenets we, as Greenfield public schools, believe that we should be helping our students to acquire,” DeBarge said. “Some of those frameworks include self-management, self-awareness, social awareness. We are really at the stage of building a climate and a culture in the district that supports a restorative philosophy.”
She said the same curriculum expectations need to be created across elementary schools, thus establishing a program that continues through the middle and high school levels.
“I know 7% can seem like a significant amount of a budget increase,” DeBarge said, “but … we need to support our social-emotional learning and our academic resources for all of our students along the continuum, from enhancing and growing our core academic and social-emotional learning instruction and resources, all the way through providing academic and social-emotional interventions for our students who may struggle.”
Reporter Mary Byrne can be reached at mbyrne@recorder.com or 413-930-4429. Twitter: @MaryEByrne