LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — Town officials Tuesday told Mount Greylock Regional School District administrators to find a way to lower the fiscal 2023 assessment to the town or face a fight on the floor of this spring's annual town meeting.

 

"This is going to be a hard sell on the floor," Selectmen Chair John Goerlach said. "Anything you can do would be helpful."

 

The Selectmen held a joint meeting with the town's Finance Committee to hear a presentation from district officials on the FY23 spending plan that received near unanimous support from the regional School Committee, including "yes" votes from two of the Lanesborough residents who serve on the seven-person School Committee.

 

The $26.6 million FY23 budget for the PreK-12 district includes a $6.1 million assessment to the town of Lanesborough. That represents an increase of just less than $252,000, or 4.29 percent from the $5.9 million bill the district sent Lanesborough for the current fiscal year, which ends on June 30.

 

The assessments for FY23 will face up-or-down votes at the annual town meetings in both Lanesborough and Williamstown. The select boards and finance committees in each town typically make advisory votes to attendees at the town meeting.

 

None of those votes came on Tuesday night, but individual members of the two town boards pressed the district to either trim costs or find other ways to pay for its projected needs in the coming fiscal year in order to reduce assessment to the member towns.

 

Goerlach's terse assessment of the school system's assessment came after he seconded the remarks of Fin Comm member Stephen Wentworth, who offered a more detailed critique of the budget request.

 

"Here's the problem as I see it: The operational increase is 4.7 percent, and, dollars-wise, it's an increase of $252,000," Wentworth said. "That is, in my opinion, unaffordable for the town and seniors living on fixed incomes.

 

"As it now stands, it would raise taxes $144, just for the schools alone, on the average single-family home of $260,000. When town spending is added, that could be a tax increase of $300 or more. The average tax burden as it stands now, is just under $5,000, according to the state. Small towns with substantially lower per-capita incomes cannot absorb school budget increases of 4.5 to 5 percent."

 

Wentworth noted that school spending accounts for 53 percent of Lanesborough's total municipal budget. And the town, he said, has spending priorities outside of education that need to be met.

 

"Lanesborough has infrastructure needs it must address," Wentworth said. "An ambulance service, a police station and police officers. An ambulance service because the volunteers aren't there anymore, and County Ambulance can't cover us. A police station because ours should have been replaced decades ago. And police officers because the state is eliminating the part-timers who used to supplement our small, regular force, increasing costs.

 

"So the problem for me, as a Finance Committee member, is that I cannot support the school budget as it is currently constructed. Nor do I think it will pass the annual town meeting without Finance Committee support. I need the School Committee to look for ways to responsibly lower costs or utilize available reserves to take the budget down to a cost level I and the committee can support, assuming they agree with me, and the town can support and pass."

 

The district's budget as presented Tuesday night already draws down on two of Mount Greylock's three reserve funds.

 

The tuition account is projected to have an FY22 year-end balance of $1.03 million; after using $1.06 million in the FY23 spending plan, it is projected to have an ending balance on June 30, 2023, of $760,000 (down 26 percent year to year).

 

The School Choice account is projected to stand at $1.05 million on June 30 of this year. If the budget stands as approved by the School Committee, that account would have $890,000 at the end of FY23, a drop of 15 percent.

 

A third reserve account, the district's "Excess and Deficiency" line, is not touched in the FY23 spending plan. It is projected to stand at $960,000 on June 30 of this year, and district officials decided not to tap it in the FY23 budget because the district plans to go to bid on the final "clean-up" bonds on the Mount Greylock Regional School building projects, and bond agencies look favorably at districts that have large E&D accounts, Assistant Superintendent of Business and Finance Joe Bergeron told the Lanesborough officials.

 

E&D is the functional equivalent of what town governments know as "free cash." It is where school districts put revenue that it receives but does not actually spend in a given fiscal year, and it can be tapped by the School Committee to address budget shortfalls in subsequent years.

 

The other two reserve accounts, School Choice and tuition, are funded by revenue received from students outside Lanesborough and Williamstown who attend the district's schools. School Choice is a statewide program that reimburses districts at a rate of $5,000 per child for non-resident students; the district has tuition agreements with the neighboring towns of New Ashford and Hancock, who send their students to Mount Greylock district schools at a rate of $15,706 per student.

 

Several of the town officials at Tuesday's meeting encouraged the district to apply more of its reserve funds to the FY23 budget in order to reduce the property tax burden on the member towns.

 

Bergeron reiterated the advantage of keeping the E&D account higher and cautioned that none of the reserve accounts are inexhaustible.

 

"As we look at specific types of targeted relief that we can do to spend more out of the tuition account or spend more out of the [School Choice] account, at least in this coming year, would be a better strategic choice," he said. "If we end up focusing funding for certain purposes within certain school buildings, it could change the way we think about some of these investments in staff that we're thinking about.

 

"If we need to spend more out of revolving accounts in a single year, what does that mean for the next year and the year after when we can't keep on spending more than we bring in. That's one of the conversations that I would love for us to have tonight, to understand what a sustainable path is, and if it can include the staff that we're talking about needing to bring in, great. If it can't, that's a message we need to hear, too."

 

Among the suggestions for cost-cutting moves from individual town officials at Tuesday's meeting: pushing back against a 14 percent increase in the Berkshire County Retirement System's assessment and a 8 percent increase from Berkshire Health Group by putting those benefits out to bid; increasing class sizes at the elementary schools to as many as 29 pupils per class; and cutting the number of paraprofessionals in the schools.

 

None of the officials at the meeting made a direct appeal to cut a much-discussed $100,000 line item for a new director of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in the central administration office. But Fin Comm Chair Jodi-Lee Szczepaniak-Locke asked whether the district sees the DEIB post as a temporary or permanent position.

 

"I try not to treat any position we bring in as necessarily permanent because class sizes change, student populations change and needs change," Superintendent Jason McCandless said. "Certainly, we think of this as something we're attempting to do that is new. It may not be forever. If we can solve the problems before us, that's a tremendous win.

 

"I don't think we'll recruit from the best and the brightest out there if we don't have some stability. We'd be looking at this as a three-year contract, a three-year commitment."

 

McCandless agreed with and amplified comments from Szczepaniak-Locke and Selectman Michael Murphy about a desire for the position to address "belonging" needs of a wide range of students, not just students of color.

 

"I grew up in a low-income family," Murphy said. "I was worried about diversity and how I was seen growing up. I've always been sensitive to that. … In regard to diversity, you talk about income levels, ethnic background. Have you looked at the other big issues of diversity today? Sexual orientation is probably the easiest way to sum that up?"

 

"Absolutely," McCandless replied. "Lots of folks, myself included, at one point leap right to racial diversity, and that is one of the diversities. You name several, including gender identification and sexual orientation."

 

Szczepaniak-Locke brought up an equity issue that frequently comes up in conversations about the two-town district.

 

"Having graduated from the school system in 1992 … I do find it personally devastating we still have socio-economic issues between Williamstown and Lanesborough," she said. "In the sense of diversity, I hope we can address that and hopefully put it to rest."

 

The superintendent said he is aware of the dichotomy between the towns and hopes the new director of DEIB can bridge the divide.

 

"Part of that person's job will be helping to get a tighter weave between Lanesborough Elementary and Williamstown Elementary so our students feel a little more cohesive and a little more like they're one when they get to Mount Greylock," McCandless said. "We know we have some work to do there. I have heard from Lanesborough families formally and informally it is sometimes tough to get a sense that you're a full partner at Mount Greylock, which physically sits in Williamstown."

 

Selectman Gordan Hubbard used Tuesday's meeting to ask whether local taxpayers were getting their money's worth from the Mount Greylock district.

 

"I was not thoroughly impressed with the scores on the [state's] report card for Lanesborough Elementary and Mount Greylock," Hubbard said. "I expect our scores to be amazing, and they were OK. Math was on average with the state. Mass Core scores were not stellar. I expected better.

 

"If we were getting kids who were doing really well, I wouldn't have as much of a problem with $251,000."

 

McCandless said standardized tests are not the only measure of success in a district, but said he believes they are a useful assessment tool. And the district always will have room to improve, he said.

 

"[LES] is definitely a school that takes its performance seriously," McCandless said. "It tends to be among the top elementary schools, certainly in the Berkshires. The Lanesborough Elementary 2021 percentile ranking against elementary schools in the state, it was in the 73rd percentile. I'd love to sit and discuss that a little more in depth with you."

 

The district officials are scheduled to present the FY23 budget to Williamstown's Finance Committee on March 30. The full School Committee does not have a meeting currently scheduled before its April 14 monthly meeting.

 

Lanesborough's Szczepaniak-Locke ended Tuesday's meeting on a relatively optimistic note.

 

"We do trust in [McCandless and Bergeron]," she said. "We are not the school administrators or business managers. So we have to work with you to understand your processes and your wishes and desires.

 

"I think we have a little bit of work to do in the next few weeks. We'll be in touch."