GREENFIELD — As the city heads into its fiscal year 2026 budget season, an ongoing conflict over transparency between the School Department and City Council has re-emerged.

School Committee member Kathryn Martini, who chairs the Budget and Finance Subcommittee, announced at last week’s School Committee meeting that the proposed education budget for FY26 is seeing a roughly 5.6% increase in all funds and a 7.9% increase in local appropriations. The news preceded an announcement that Superintendent Karin Patenaude will hold a detailed budget presentation at a meeting on Monday, Feb. 24.

“That [increase] includes seven positions, the majority of which are needed to actualize the redistricting effort developed by the committee over the past two years and that is going into effect in the fall,” Martini said. “One of these positions is also needed in order to provide BEACON Program services … which have helped 30 of our at-risk students to graduate with a high school diploma in recent years.”

The BEACON Learning Program, a partnership between the district and Greenfield Community College, aims to forge alternative pathways to graduation for students at risk of dropping out.

Reflecting on previous budgetary conflicts between the departments, in which city councilors criticized the committee for withholding information on transportation spending, School Committee Chair Glenn Johnson-Mussad argued that the council’s pleas for transparency have been “less than 100% respectful.”

“There were kind of insinuations that someone was hiding something — there were times when people said, ‘I’ve been told never to ask questions,’” Johnson-Mussad said. “It didn’t really strike me as accurate or fully respectful.”

At-Large Councilor Michael Terounzo, who attended the School Committee meeting, expressed his frustrations with the School Department’s alleged lack of transparency at Wednesday’s City Council meeting. Terounzo also referenced a perceived inappropriate dynamic between Patenaude and Johnson-Mussad, implying blind loyalty to the superintendent.

The councilor further urged for increased transparency and communication between the two departments this budget cycle, noting that “to be shot down at every request [for information]” is, in itself, “less than respectful.”

“The School [Department’s] presentation in the three years that I’ve been here has been the weakest budget presentation of any single department. Even small departments do a better job justifying what they’re spending, why they’re spending it, and do not give us the blowback that the schools have in the last three years,” Terounzo said. “Overall, the job of the School Committee is to represent the students and the citizens that elected those folks. There’s been a whole bunch of bootlicking, and I don’t believe that that’s appropriate when presenting a budget.”

In response to Terounzo’s remarks, Johnson-Mussad said he was not upset with City Council’s questions to the School Committee, but more so with the ways in which the departments communicate with one another.

“I’m very happy to hear your questions, your concerns about the budgets and so on. It’s not the content that is of concern to me,” Johnson-Mussad said. “It is the mischaracterization of certain statements, and it’s the characterization using, shall we say, robust language that I don’t think is really appropriate and doesn’t contribute to a respectful relationship.”

Johnson-Mussad also asked the council whether Terounzo’s frustrations are shared by other councilors. President Lora Wondolowski clarified that City Council’s questions about the department’s spending are for informational purposes and should not be seen as accusations.

Wondolowski offered to meet with Johnson-Mussad for coffee to discuss communications between the School Department and City Council. Johnson-Mussad agreed to this offer.

“When counselors were asking about certain questions about the budget, it’s because most of the city department budgets give us that information,” Wondolowski said. “If we’re looking at that together, it looks like an outlier, so we want to make sure that we’re evaluating you all in the same way so that we can make the best case for what you’re putting forward.”

Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at acammalleri@recorder.com or 413-930-4429.