CHARLEMONT — An error in enrollment calculations resulted in Charlemont being overcharged by $109,768 between the 2021 and 2025 fiscal years by the Mohawk Trail Regional School District, according to Town Administrator Sarah Reynolds.
Reynolds, in a Selectboard meeting this week, said the town received an email from the district explaining that the overcharging was caused by an error in the district’s five-year rolling enrollment assessment. She added that Charlemont would like to bring all of the district’s eight towns — Ashfield, Buckland, Colrain, Charlemont, Heath, Plainfield, Hawley and Shelburne — together to discuss next steps.
Discussing the matter further in an interview on Tuesday, Reynolds explained that while she does not believe it’s likely that the town will be reimbursed, it will ultimately be up to the eight towns. According to data shared by the district, Hawley also overpaid by $10,768 over the same span of time.
“It already happened. The only way that you would be able to do anything with it is if all the other towns [work together] … because when somebody overpays, they ended up paying less than they would have,” Reynolds said. “They’re going to have a discussion just to decide how they would like to proceed, because the district can’t remedy this issue on its own. It’s not like you can just go back and correct it. Everybody would have to be participating in it and trying to work on it.”
Reynolds clarified that the school district identified the problem in February 2025 and contacted the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).
The document shared by the school district states that DESE recommended that the towns resolve the issue “amongst themselves” and “determine how they would reimburse the affected towns directly,” but added that the district “cannot collect and disburse those funds directly” as it occurred in a previous fiscal year.
“Something like this happening is really unfortunate. I mean, it wasn’t the fault of the people that discovered it. … It’s not like anybody was negligent,” Reynolds said. “It’s really unfortunate, especially with the budgets as tight as they are. Towns are really trying to figure out how to budget for all of their needs, and something like this is just really unfortunate.”
The letter sent to the towns from the district stated that the business office became aware of the enrollment calculation error and was able to correct the assessments for fiscal year 2026. Charlemont had been billed for 48 students when it had 36, and Hawley’s enrollment was corrected from 12 to nine.
The document states Ashfield underpaid by $24,029, Buckland by $48,667, Colrain by $20,440, Heath by $13,991, Plainfield by $4,634 and Shelburne by $8,270.
Selectboard member Wilder Sparks echoed Reynolds’ remarks, adding that since the district no longer contracts with an outside firm to calculate assessments and manage financial services, and has hired its own business administrator to do work in-house, he hopes that the towns will be able to resolve the matter civilly.
“It basically boils down to, I believe, an enrollment number error that was miscalculated over a long period of time,” he said. “My understanding is it’s now being done in-house, and they believe that they’re doing their due diligence and double-checking, and I have no reason to doubt that. We’re still trying to be a little bit more diligent ourselves and looking at these numbers to fully see what’s happened.”
While Charlemont officials said they would like to bring the towns together, invitations to discuss the matter have not been sent out yet. The other towns in the district have just received the letter from the district acknowledging the error, and stating that since the error occurred in a previous fiscal year, they are unable to use district funds to pay back the overcharged assessment, and it will be up to the towns to decide how to proceed.
Tuesday evening in Heath, Selectboard members said they had received the notification from the school district, but had not heard from any other towns. They hope someone steps up to initiate a meeting among the towns, preferably after the Annual Town Meetings.
“If this had happened to us, we would probably appreciate the other towns stepping up,” Heath Selectboard member Elissa Viarengo said. “I think this has been going on for five years, so I’m not feeling urgency, but I am feeling that this is worth a conversation and understanding our role in it. … I think we [should] schedule a conversation about it and then take steps afterwards depending on where we get in that conversation, but we maybe schedule it for right after ATM. We’ve got a very full plate.”