To the editor:
As the school and town budget season approaches us in these challenging times, it is worth a review of the numerical and financial implications that we must surmount.
The current fiscal challenges of Great Barrington have reared their ugly heads once again, and there is no easy solution. Some of the challenges have arisen due to lack of investment in town infrastructure, which is a common issue in towns with burdensome school budgets, and some due to lack of a decreasing tax base. A large challenge remains the funding of the Berkshire Hills Regional School District (BHRSD), which predictably grows each year while the number of residents and students decreases.
Recent combined Great Barrington Selectboard/Finance Committee meetings have revolved around where to cut the budget by eliminating certain services and decreasing support to certain functions that have been supported in the past.
The 800-pound gorilla in the room is BHRSD. The situation is complicated as the head of the Selectboard and the head of the School Committee is the same person. This needlessly complicates issues between the town and the school district. It also creates a situation where the School Committee dictates a budget and the residents of Great Barrington are expected to pay up.
Getting back to the issue at hand, I decided to compare the school budget of the Amherst Regional Public Schools (ARPS) system (where our daughters went) with that of Berkshire Hills Regional School District. Having the presentations given by both school districts in hand and the ever-revealing DESE database from the Commonwealth, let me share some data with all of you.
The financial numbers are remarkably similar in certain regards. I am not including the cost of the elementary schools to the residents of Amherst, Pelham, Leverett, and Shutesbury. The regional budgets are the interesting comparisons.
Of note, BHRSD has 365 students in the elementary school.
Interesting talking points include that the Amherst Regional district has a lower dropout rate and better AP performance, SAT scoring, and accountability goals while spending less per teacher and total salaries with more FTE.
The relevant discussion point regarding our budgetary woes is that the cost of the school district is spread to very few taxpayers in Great Barrington while it is spread out over many taxpayers in Amherst. To place that delta in perspective, the population of Great Barrington is 7,194, while that of Amherst is 40,277. Another way of looking at the breakdown is that the population of the three towns compromising BHRSD is 10,473 while that of ARPS is 45,124.
So our share of BHRSD is $22,393,892.00 while ARS/Amherst’s is $19,596,989.00. I appreciate that school districts are not a true apple-to-apple comparison, but the gist of the argument remains that we are in a bind in that the shrinking population cannot continue with the current spending trend. Amherst has a larger and wealthier population that also has to worry about their school budget, but the cost is spread out among a much larger group of taxpayers. The only solution is to change the sacrosanct BHRSD budget and change the management of BHRSD. The unsustainable increasing budget of BHRSD is a non-starter.
Jan Wojcik
Great Barrington
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