WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — A question about the size of a single classroom at Lanesborough Elementary School led to a big-picture discussion about school funding at Tuesday's Mount Greylock Transition Committee meeting.

 

And it highlighted one of the challenges the district is likely to face as it implements an elementary school funding approach that paved the way for passing full regionalization in November.

 

At issue was next year's fourth grade at the PreK-6 school, one of three in the recently expanded district.

 

Fourth-grade teacher Jennifer Szymanski and third-grade teacher Anna Mello each urged the Transition Committee to find a way to split the 25 pupils into two rooms for next year.

 

Lanesborough Principal Martin McEvoy said if more funds were available, splitting the grade would be on his list of priorities for how to spend the money. But, citing the fiscal realities of his budget, McEvoy said he had to make the decision to keep the cohort in one classroom.

 

Those realities include the fact that Lanesborough Elementary's impact on local taxpayers for fiscal 2019 — after adjusting for shifts between the town and school budgets because of regionalization — is down by .86 percent, from $2.47 million in the current fiscal year to $2.45 million in FY19.

 

That slight decrease is offset by a 3.34 percent increase in Lanesborough's contribution at the district's middle-high school under a budget approved by the Transition Committee on Tuesday night.

 

Prior to that approval, the annual public hearing drew four comments from the floor of the Mount Greylock library. Each of the members of the public identified as either a teacher at Lanesborough or a resident of Lanesborough.

 

Szymanski made the strongest appeal.

 

"I'm sure that it looks awfully self-serving for the fourth-grade teacher to make this request," she said. "But in 23 years of teaching, I've only come before this type of committee once. I'm alarmed that 25 9-year-olds are going to be in a fourth-grade classroom. In the entire history of fourth-grade at the current building, we've never had 25. By the time they get to sixth grade, we do have bigger classes … but with the expectation on fourth-grade, the expectation on these 9-year-olds to meet state standards in a class of 25 is difficult.

 

"As elementary school teachers, we handle it. We play the hand we're dealt. But I don't want to just 'handle it.' I feel like now is our opportunity to plan for something better."

 

And, the educators said, the lacker of a "better plan" raises a question of funding equity in the expanded region. Both Szymanski and Mello questioned why the 25-pupil classroom at Lanesborough is larger than any room at Williamstown Elementary.

 

"In another elementary school in our district, I know there are not 25 students in the fourth grade," Szymanski said. "We're expecting the same progress and the same results, and we're sending the students to the same middle school. … Every elementary school teacher in my position would handle it, but why are we setting it up to be a problem?"

 

Mello said she's had to "piecemeal" things and use every volunteer she can find to get through a year of having 25 pupils in her third-grade classroom and asked the committee to seriously look at the issue for next year.

 

"What is the cutoff number [for class size] at Williamstown?" Mello asked.

 

Williamstown Principal Joelle Brookner said her school has "ideal sizes" for its classroom and is constrained by a teachers' contract that caps sizes at 24.

 

"What's your biggest class right now?" Mello persisted.

 

"Twenty-two," Brookner answered. "But they've been bigger. We've had up to 24."

 

Mello reiterated her support for Szymanski's request.

 

"At this developmental stage when you're teaching basic math, basic writing, please think about what my colleague said," Mello said. "Let's give them every opportunity to thrive."

 

The Transition Committee, an amalgam of elected officials from the three previously independent school districts, assumed control of the expanded district on Jan. 1 and is responsible for all matters, including the FY19 budget, that impact the three schools after June 30, when the current Mount Greylock, Lanesborough Elementary and Williamstown Elementary school committees will dissolve. A new seven-member Mount Greylock Regional School Committee will be elected in November 2018.

 

After hearing the public comment on next year's budget, the Transition Committee members discussed a number of possible solutions to the fourth-grade issue at Lanesborough, including one proposed by Szymanski: opening up enough School Choice slots at the school to fund an additional teacher.

 

Transition Committee Chairman Joe Bergeron, also the chair of the Williamstown School Committee, argued that solution is especially problematic because he has seen first hand the pitfalls of building a budget that relies on School Choice revenue.

 

The committee also speculated on whether Lanesborough's tuition revenue from New Ashford, which is not included in the FY19 budget, could help fund an additional teacher. Interim Superintendent Kimberley Grady told the panel Tuesday she had a meeting scheduled Wednesday morning with her counterpart and the school committee chair in New Ashford to discuss whether the town and regional district could agree on a tuition rate. But ultimately, the New Ashford budget is subject to the approval of that town's town meeting and can't be counted as a certainty going into the district's budgeting process.

 

"If the agreement comes through, a portion of that money can be used," Grady said. "But based on the budget we have in front of us and the revenues we have available, I'd have to make cuts somewhere else at Lanesborough [to fund an additional position]."

 

Transition Committee member Regina DiLego argued against relying on the tuition revenue to solve the issue.

 

"To me, philosophically, using tuition to pay for a teaching position is the same as using School Choice to pay for a teaching position," said DiLego, the chairwoman of the LES Committee. "I'd rather vote to add money [to the appropriated budget] and advocate for a teaching position or not."

 

Transition Committee member Steven Miller, who comes from the Mount Greylock School Committee, asked how many years in a row Lanesborough Elementary School has been level funded. McEvoy replied that FY19 would mark the fourth straight year.

 

"Why?" asked Chris Dodig, also a member of the Mount Greylock committee. "Why four years in a row remaining flat?"

 

"From the town's perspective, they're going to say we have declining enrollment," Grady replied.

 

Al Terranova, another Mount Greylock School Committee member and, like Dodig, a resident of Lanesborough, argued that "Lanesborough is an education town," and the voters would support a larger school budget.

 

The budget approved by the Transition Committee on Tuesday night gives Lanesborough a total assessment (adjusted for cost shifts between town and district) of $5,724,412 for FY19; in FY18, the town's outlay for education was $5,639,989. That means an FY19 increase of $84,423, or 1.4 percent.

 

Grady noted that town meeting in either town could vote to increase the budget for its elementary school later in the spring, but the Transition Committee was locked into a maximum assessment as voted on Tuesday night.

 

As for the idea that there are disparities between class sizes at the district's two elementary schools, that points to the funding mechanism the towns agreed to when they voted to regionalize in the fall.

 

"It was one of the things we talked about with regionalization, this question of equity," said Transition Committee member Carolyn Greene, a Williamstown resident on the Mount Greylock School Committee. "We had this decision that the towns would pay for their elementary schools, and it's kind of in contradiction, right? So here we are facing the reality where we would like to be providing equity across towns, but we're also limited by what each town will support for its elementary school.

 

"We don't have full ability to have equity even if we wanted to because it's based on what each town would support."

 

Dodig argued that the regional school district's job is to advocate for the budget the schools need and let the voters decide at town meeting.

 

"I think going forward, with [Greene's point about the funding mechanism] understood, it's the school committee's obligation to try to do the right thing for those schools," Dodig said. "We can't assume those towns need a zero budget. The people at the select board may tell us that's what they want, but we can't assume that's what the town wants, and that's who we work for. I'm struggling with this. Even though that's how we decided to finance regionalization — individual towns paying for elementary schools — as a school committee, that's tough to practice."