Great Barrington — The high school art teacher and the Early Kindergarten program are among a number of proposed programming cuts that are back in the game after the Berkshire Hills Regional School District School Committee reversed itself, voting 9-1 last night (March 5) to approve a budget that restores the nearly $250,000 in program and staff cuts that the committee had proposed just two weeks ago.
District voters in Stockbridge, Great Barrington and West Stockbridge must now agree to it at their town meetings this May.
Committee member Frederick Clark was opposed; he thought there should be more cuts to avoid any hikes whatsoever in a budget that had already gone up around $860,000 from last year due to mostly unavoidable expenses like insurance and transportation cost increases.
The committee voted to approve a gross operating and capital budget of $24,611,728 (net $24,138,728), which for Great Barrington is a 7 percent increase ($911,342) from last year, and totaling $13,524,504. Stockbridge will see an 8 percent increase, and West Stockbridge, a .17 percent decrease due, in part, to enrollment declines.
Budget information can be accessed here, at the Berkshire Hills website.
Restored programming includes paraprofessionals and a classroom teacher to the Early Kindergarten program at Muddy Brook Regional Elementary School; the art instructor at Monument Mountain Regional High School; and the computer instructor at the Monument Valley Regional Middle School.
The finance subcommittee had, only a day earlier (March 4), learned that the district would receive $12,000 less in state aid than what the district had thought it would get.
“We did very well,” Superintendent Peter Dillon said, referring to the state’s reduction, “but [the Gov.] cut a whole range of grants.”
One of those was a $55,000 kindergarten grant, and the approved budget includes covering that cost.
Both finance subcommittee member Richard Dohoney and committee chair Stephen Bannon were the only two members who voted to approve the originally proposed budget that included the cuts.
“What was cut out of the budget would have stayed in at any cost if we thought there would have been a detrimental effect [on education],” Dohoney said, noting how carefully the cuts had been made with input by all three principals.
Some members of the finance subcommittee admitted flat out that the cuts were a politically inspired effort to lessen the blow to Great Barrington bank accounts. Yet an emotional public hearing on February 26 drew a crowd of parents and former students to support the district and rally against the cuts, while asking the committee for systemic changes to the operation of the district so it might avoid proposing similar programming carnage — or worse — in the future.
But a restoration of the cuts won out last night after that first vote failed and member Richard Bradway made a motion for a level program budget. “I’m done cutting for the sake of cutting,” he said. He wanted the committee to “start thinking about how to make fundamental changes in the district.”
Dohoney defended the cuts. “We have never sent a 7 percent increase to Great Barrington,” he said. “We’ve never gone over 5 percent. It was to address the unique set of numbers we were presented with this year.”
Yet after consideration, Dohoney was in favor of Bradway’s motion. “I think it does what we are charged with doing, delivering quality education to our kids without wasteful spending,” he said. “There is no wasteful spending in this budget — not a dime of it.”
“I agree with the role of the committee,” Fred Clark said, “but balancing it with available resources.”
“These last two years that balance is almost impossible,” Bannon said, noting cost escalations and reduced funding. He said he would “reluctantly” support restoring the cuts. “Fred is right. We need change. I’m not sure how we change this…this is a very scary time. I thought last year was bad — this is worse.”
“We’ve done a lot, but there was no way we can do enough to affect this year’s budget,” Bannon said of the movement the committee has made to address issues like tuition agreements and the district agreement.
Finance subcommittee member Bill Fields, a retired Monument High social studies teacher, was uneasy with the cuts from the get-go. “I think we send a message by passing this budget that we care about the community. It’s a tight budget, but it’s one I can support. We can stand by it and it defends our mission.”
“I feel we should send a message: we support quality of education,” he added.
The $1.8 million capital budget — which includes the outstanding debt for the construction of the elementary and middle schools — was voted on separately and received unanimous approval. It includes some borrowing for repairs and replacements, and the borrowing of $325,000 for repairing the track, tennis courts and 14 doors at the high school, among a few other things.
Dohoney didn’t like the idea of a fixed up tennis court next to “a high school in that condition,” and has said before that it may be prudent to find a way to have the track become a source of revenue. Yet he also acknowledged that both were in need of repair.
Bill Fields didn’t want to defer maintenance. He also said that the track and tennis courts were a “vital part of the physical education…life, sports…” and the idea of charging the community to use them would be tantamount to “quadruple taxation.”
