Mount Greylock interim Superintendent Gordon Noseworthy addresses the School Committee on the state of the upcoming budget.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock Regional School Committee on Tuesday got a first look at the potential impacts on school programming if it is forced to trim its assessments to the towns of Williamstown and Lanesborough.

 

Everything from larger class sizes to fewer course choices to the elimination of some co-curricular activities is on the table as the district develops the budget it hopes will be approved by voters in both towns this spring.

 

Last month, Chairwoman Carolyn Greene told her colleagues that town officials in Lanesborough had told the district it would be limited to a 1 percent increase in its budget — or less — or face a town meeting floor fight without the backing of the town's elected officials.

 

On Tuesday, interim Superintendent Gordon Noseworthy and Principal Mary MacDonald gave the committee its first look at the fiscal 2016 budget, and it was obvious that a 1 percent increase would lead to some choices no one in the room wanted to make.

 

Without a single increase in discretionary spending, the district is looking at an 8.7 percent budget increase over fiscal 2015 for a number of reasons, Noseworthy explained.

 

The district has contractual salary increases for current staff in the amount of $178,400, an estimated health insurance bill increase of $171,000, utility increases, a negotiated increase in the bus contract, the repayment of a bond that was delayed in the FY15 belt-tightening and other "obligations" that total more than $900,000.

 

And, unlike last year, the district does not have money from the school tuition "revolver" account to help offset the assessments to the town. Those reserves were expended in an effort to get the current year's budget through the town of Lanesborough.

 

In order to get the FY16 budget request down, MacDonald and Noseworthy laid out two tiers of budget cuts — one to get the increase down to 4.5 percent (or $10.9 million in total budget) and another to get it down to a 2.37 percent rise over FY15.

 

The first wave of cuts would include curriculum offerings like electives in the visual and performing arts, business and social studies, the elimination of two late buses, elimination of hockey and swimming — two sports Mount Greylock offers as part of cooperatives with Wahconah and St. Joseph, respectively — and cuts to the budget for text books.

 

The second wave, to get to a 2.37 budget increase, would be even more severe.

 

"Increased class sizes, I wiped out instructional supplies, the library may only be open for three days if a library assistant was cut from the budget, there would be no spring drama, we'd potentially eliminate up to three varsity sports," MacDonald said.

 

"This is deja vu from my first budget season, and it was very unpleasant," Greene said. "Then we did the Tri-District [shared administraton with Lanesborough and Williamstown Elementary Schools], and we saved a lot of money. Since then we've had years where we did 0 percent, 1 percent [increases] to the towns. We were in a very good situation.

 

"We've tried very hard to be responsible, and every once in a while you get into a situation like this. This is one of those years when you have to work really, really hard to make it work."

 

If neither the 4.5 percent increase nor the 2.37 percent increase pass muster with the towns, the junior-senior high school district will have to eliminate teaching positions, MacDonald said.

 

"We are cutting FTEs," she said, using the term for full-time equivalent positions. "That is all we have left. We have cut administration costs to the bone. We have cut professional development. We've cut technology.

 

"At this point, the only place we have left to go into are core curricular classes — English, math, science — and begin to cut FTEs there. ... Or we could turn around and cut co-curriculars, and I know none of us would want that to happen."

 

One of the committee's newest members, Lanesborough resident Richard Cohen, argued that co-curriculars are essential to the culture at Mount Greylock and that even the proposed "first tier" of cuts would impact students and families in his town, where the population is farther from the school.

 

"Mount Greylock will be a less great school if it reduces co-curriculars," Cohen said. "Success in school depends on engagements of students and their families. Having that kind of participation changes what happens during the day in terms of cohesiveness and community.

 

"I think we need to very carefully look at questions of cutting those kinds of services."

 

The School Committee will take another look at the budget on Feb. 11 when it holds its second straight special meeting — this time coinciding with an already scheduled meeting of its finance subcommittee at 9 a.m.

 

The committee plans to present its preliminary budget to Lanesborough on March 16 and Williamstown on March 17. The final budget proposal needs to be passed by the committee and sent to the towns for inclusion on the annual town meeting warrants by March 31.

 

Tuesday's special meeting of the School Committee began as a joint meeting with the select boards from both member towns. The three bodies met to elect someone to fill out the unexpired term of departed committee member Colleen Taylor of Williamstown. Steven Miller, who unsuccessfully ran for a seat on the committee in November 2014, unanimously was elected on Tuesday to serve until this November.