CHARLEMONT — Town officials are set to learn how a district’s school enrollment impacts assessments for member communities.
The Selectboard accepted an offer from Ken Rocke, a Heath resident with a background in education, to lead workshops about how Chapter 70 state aid works, and to analyze Charlemont’s enrollment and assessment data over the past 10 years and see how incorrect enrollment data may have impacted the town financially.
Rocke explained that in previous years, Charlemont’s enrollment numbers were incorrect, leading to higher assessments for Charlemont and lower assessments for other towns in the Mohawk Trail and Hawlemont regional school districts. While the enrollment numbers have been corrected in the current budget cycle, he has not received information on what the assessments would have been had enrollment data been correct.
“I’ve been looking at Chapter 70 funding in general, and also the Mohawk Trail and Hawlemont regional school districts’ funding mechanism, which is a five-year enrollment,” said Rocke, who has previously taught at Franklin County Technical School, served as an interim superintendent at the Gill-Montague Regional School District and as superintendent of the Blue Hills Regional Technical School. “That data point, once you correct it, does not just affect one-fifth of years; it affects five years. So they made a correction to the 2026 budget, but to my knowledge, they did not go back and say, what would the assessments have been if we had used the corrected number.”
During a Hawlemont School Committee meeting last month, Chair Kenneth Bertsch told his fellow members about Rocke’s inquiry for an enrollment audit. Bertsch said enrollment numbers had been corrected for fiscal year 2026, and as the district is in the midst of budget season, the finance office may not have time to assist with an audit right now.
“My observation is that there were a lot of mistakes under the previous outsourced business manager, and this is one that did not come to light until more recently,” Bertsch said. “I raised this with [Business Administrator] Bill [Lataille] and he feels totally swamped with budget stuff.”
Superintendent Sheryl Stanton added that even if incorrect enrollment data led to incorrect assessments for the town, the district is prohibited by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education from using its funds to pay Charlemont back for previous years. If the town wishes for any form of compensation, it would need to be negotiated with the other member towns in the district.
“The other piece that’s interesting is there is no way to use district funds to correct the error, because it happened in the past,” Stanton said. “I’m not sure what an audit would create, except what we already know, and [there’s] no way to correct that without all eight towns agreeing to somehow reimburse Charlemont.”
She added that the enrollment numbers have been reviewed to ensure everything is correct for fiscal years 2026 and 2027. As the Mohawk Trail and Hawlemont regional school districts prepare to present their budgets at Annual Town Meetings this spring, central office staff do not have time to help Rocke look for problems that have been corrected.
“It feels more like a digging expedition because we have been round and round and round with Ken Rocke,” Stanton said.
Still, Selectboard members agreed it would be beneficial for them to sit down with members of the School Committee, Finance Committee and town administrator to learn how Chapter 70 allocations and minimum contributions are calculated, and the impacts on Charlemont assessments. They plan to request records from the districts for their review.
“I think it’s reasonable to think that you should have a fair and transparent accounting of what the assessments would have been if they had been using the numbers that they’re now recognizing are correct,” Rocke said.
Town Administrator Sarah Reynolds added that an informational session with Rocke would also be beneficial so that she and other town officials know what to look out for to prevent future errors in assessments.
“I’m interested to learn this because when you’re interfacing with the budgets, it would be nice to understand it, because when you look at the workbook, that’s how you catch things,” Reynolds said. “If you don’t understand what you’re reading, you’re never going to catch anything.”