The Pioneer Valley Regional School District is suffering right now, having slipped unwittingly into a $1 million deficit. It’s not the first time we’ve seen this happen at a Franklin County school system over the years, although the past two instances that we recall involved holes of about half this size.
Knowing they aren’t the first to fail in their oversight role won’t make the Pioneer School Board members feel any better about the predicament in which they find themselves. To a large degree, committees are dependent on the information they get from the professionals they hire to run the schools. They trust — sometimes to a fault — that their superintendents and business managers have a handle on things.
It seems that Pioneer’s leadership didn’t have a handle on things, however. Otherwise, a state review of the books would not have been needed to discover such a large structural deficit had accumulated in recent years.
After some initial shock and hand-wringing at the discovery of the deficit in an already precarious fiscal time, Pioneer school officials plotted a sensible course correction this week.
Insisting there is nothing left to cut from the school budget that takes effect July 1, the committee has chosen to borrow money and spend at a deficit through the coming year while it restructures its spending to something sustainable in the long term.
School Committee member Sharon Fontaine argued making huge cuts in a panic for next year would do more harm than good and drive families away, exacerbating the situation. The lifeline of borrowing will buy time to thoughtfully analyze where they went wrong, and how to fix it.
It’s probably a good thing that Superintendent Ruth Miller chose to leave the district this month as her three-year contract expires, because it’s hard to see how the district and its taxpayers would have any confidence in her ability to help solve the problem that emerged unseen during her tenure.
We hope that the interim superintendent that the district has hired, with the help of state officials who are looking into the situation, can provide the school committee with the expertise and guidance it will need in the coming year to fix the mess and to get on a financially healthy footing.
The decision to spend at a deficit and borrow money, rather than make further immediate cuts, comes after several major cuts were made to this coming year’s budget, including several teacher layoffs and reductions to elementary school special classes.
The committee debated asking the towns for more money to plug the hole now, but decided against it — although it might come to asking for a one-time infusion of cash to pay off the debt, much like a related lunch program deficit was covered this year.
Closing Leyden’s Pearl Rhodes Elementary School or Warwick Community School next year has been ruled out, as doing so would require a change to the district agreement, which would have to be approved by the member towns. This may be a necessary medicine down the road, if enough voters in those towns can swallow it.
But, for now, there is much serious work and many tough decisions ahead, and we hope that as many residents of the Pioneer community as possible lend their support and constructive ideas to the school board, because the job ahead is difficult. Cooperation, not carping or castigation, are what the towns need now.