To the editor:
Reviewing the history of our school district reveals some unpleasant truths. Berkshire Hills Regional School District (BHRSD) came to exist because of the inability of our town to compromise with the Southern Berkshire Regional School District (SBRSD).
We chose to create our own school district rather than become part of the first school district in the Commonwealth. That attitude guaranteed that the thought of merging the two districts several years ago was doomed to fail. One could easily argue that it was never going to occur based upon past history. Combining two regional school districts had/has never occurred in the Commonwealth.
The ongoing financial issues from having one larger town (Great Barrington) and two smaller towns (Stockbridge and West Stockbridge) leads to recurrent discourse as to who is paying their fair share and who is taking advantage of the system. The principle of tax rate uniformity has been discussed ad nauseam over the years and still remains a contested topic.
As the current budget for BHRSD comes to a vote this weekend, I would suggest that voting down the current budget should be strongly considered.
There are several reasons why I am suggesting that we should not pass the proposed school budget.
First, the decrease in the budget by the School Committee follows the usual pattern of eliminating several popular teachers and other individuals rather than examining what drives the annual cost increase. Benefits provided such as health insurance and wages should be changed to reflect what the taxpayers are having to go with their own costs.
The average salaries of teachers at BHRSD are higher than their counterparts at Central Berkshire Regional School District (CBRSD), SBRSD, Northampton, Mt. Greylock, and Longmeadow. They are paid about the same as Amherst. Why is that a problem?
Namely because the results do not justify the expenditure. BHRSD spends more per student than the best public high schools in the state (Acton-Boxborough and Lexington) and more than regional comparable high schools such as Longmeadow and Frontier-Regional.
The other burning issue is that the student-to-teacher ratio at BHRSD is lower than any of the previously named public high schools. In simpler terms, BHRSD pays their teachers more and the teachers have less students per teacher (smaller classes).
The MCAS and SAT scores of BHRSD graduates are lower than the other school districts, and predictably less students go to a four-year college.
So why are we spending so much more than other school districts?
Part of the answer is found in the number of choice-in students admitted to BHRSD. The district has opted into the system and continues to subsidize students from other towns. The state mandates that the choice-in tuition rate is $5,000 per student. So when the students choice-in from another town, we receive $5,000 per student, but our expense per student in 2023 (DESE) was $29,046.33. We currently have 255 choice-in students enrolled. I suspect that our expenditure per student in 2024–25 is at or in excess of $30,000.00.
Let the numbers sink in… 255 students costs us $6.375 million, annually.
The current set of issues is compounded by the trend of declining enrollment for the school districts of Berkshire County. Berkshire county is getting older with decreased birth rates. We are the third oldest (age) county in the Commonwealth. Less people are paying higher costs.
This population decline was noted many years ago and studied and documented. It is interesting to read the historical studies and the projected enrollment numbers for BHRSD, CBRSD, and SBRSD. Of interest, the only school district that did worse than projected from the 2018 study was BHRSD.
Keep those trends in mind when BHRSD comes to you later this year for voting in for a new Monument Mountain Regional High School. The 1968 school building was designed for 700 to 800 students, although the exact number is vague. The Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) wants the new building to hold 485 students. In 2012, the MSBA wanted the new building to be created for 570 students and claimed that the school would be full by 2024. The actual number for 2024–25 was 431 students. The MSBA is a quasi-governmental agency that is exempt from any transparency and doesn’t have to explain any decisions that it makes.
My advice is do your homework before blindly voting to approve Article 8. BHRSD is assuming that you won’t look into the details. I am advocating that we send the budget back to them and insist on changing how we do business with them. The current method of funding the school district is not sustainable.
The voters of Great Barrington historically voted down the ever-growing budget; it is time to do it again.
Jan Wojcik
Great Barrington
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