GREENFIELD — Superintendent Christine DeBarge is proposing a $23.15 million budget for the upcoming fiscal year, representing an increase of roughly $2.17 million, or 10.35%, over fiscal year 2023.
“That 10% increase does not scare me,” said School Committee member Susan Eckstrom, after a recent presentation of the budget to the Budget and Finance Subcommittee. “That it isn’t higher than that is surprising to me. … When I see increases, I see necessary increases. It costs what it costs.”
A public hearing on the proposed budget is scheduled to take place remotely on Friday at 11:30 a.m.
According to DeBarge, the “substantial increase” largely reflects the anticipated settling of contracts, which includes retroactive pay for teachers. She added that roughly $400,000 of this reflects an increase in special education tuition.
“We’re also using just about $1 million additional [Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief] III funding that we had not planned to use for salaries for FY24,” DeBarge said.
The plan includes tapping into roughly $375,000 from the city’s contract stabilization fund to help settle retroactive pay, according to Mayor Roxann Wedegartner, who is also a member of the School Committee. Another $206,000 will come from Medicaid reimbursement.
Other increases in the budget include additional staffing requests and athletic costs.
DeBarge noted that even with the substantial increase, there were several budget items that would have been funded through the ESSER III grant and were removed in anticipation of retroactive pay.
“One is several thousand dollars we had allocated for the purchasing of new textbooks,” she said. “The other is the balance of rooftop recovery units for the middle school. … We have energy recovery units on the roof of the middle school that need to be replaced.”
DeBarge explained that the school district applied for and received a grant that would cover a significant portion of the cost of the roof project. The balance was then removed from the ESSER grant to instead help address any issues settling contracts.
“The use of additional ESSER funds does, quite frankly, present an additional problem for FY25,” she told committee members. “We knew, globally, that when ESSER funds were gone, we would likely hit a funding cliff. It’s here. We’re not alone. Other districts anticipate having the same types of staffing issues for FY25. … It doesn’t appear that this is out of the norm to have a higher than typical budget increase.”
Following a presentation of the budget last week, DeBarge asked if the Budget and Finance Subcommittee wished to direct her to create a budget with less of an increase. Committee members agreed, however, to forward the budget as written to the full committee.
“Prior to you coming here, every superintendent’s presentation … of the budget has always been less than what is actually necessary to provide the best education possible for the kids in Greenfield,” Eckstrom said. “I don’t care what the increase is; people need to know how much it costs.”
School Committee member Kate Martini voiced a similar opinion.
“I think that not even providing the best education to our students, but rather even just the appropriate public education to which they are entitled, requires significant investment on the part of the city,” she said. “The past funding for the School Department has not been adequate for that.”
Friday’s public hearing on the budget can be joined at bit.ly/3mEuyeV.
Reporter Mary Byrne can be reached at mbyrne@recorder.com or 413-930-4429. Twitter: @MaryEByrne.
An earlier version of this article had the incorrect dollar amount coming from the city’s contract stabilization fund. The amount from contract stabilization is $375,000.