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Williamstown Elementary Reserve Funds Running Low
By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
01:28PM / Friday, June 10, 2016
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Chairman Dan Caplinger engaged in dialogue with speakers during the public comment, breaking with tradition. The committee is trying to be more responsive to the community.
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The elementary school district is on track to finish the fiscal year in the black — but not by much.
 
"We're pulling into the gas pumps on fumes in terms of the operation budget," Business Manager Nancy Rauscher told the School Committee at its monthly meeting on Wednesday.
 
If current budget projections hold the district hopes to close the books on fiscal 2016 later this summer with about $38,000 in its school-choice reserve account.
 
"To give you some perspective, in March, I gave you a range of zero to $57,000," Rauscher said of the reserve fund forecast. "In prior years, that number was several hundred thousand dollars. Ideally, it would be more like 3 percent of the budget."
 
For a district with a budget just north of $6 million, that means the reserve should be closer to $200,000 to cover unanticipated expenses, School Committee Chairman Dan Caplinger noted.
 
The problem the school district has had maintaining such a reserve is twofold, Rauscher noted.
 
"As the number of [resident students] has increased, the result is fewer school choice students are coming in," she said. "Revenue is going down, and there's a good reason for that. That's a very real trend we need to be conscious of and start to manage our expectations."
 
At the same time that school choice revenue has declined, the district is living with a practice of budgeting operating expenses against anticipated school choice revenues — the "non-appropriated" side of the budget, since it comes from funds not appropriated from town taxes.
 
Earlier this year in announcing a number of budget cuts at the elementary school, Superintendent Douglas Dias noted the need to end that practice and rebuild the reserve.
 
That — along with a spike in health insurance costs — is why the FY17 budget includes spending cuts despite actually seeking more property tax funds from the town.
 
"What we're trying to work toward is building it up," Rauscher said.
 
At Wednesday's meeting, the School Committee authorized Rauscher to make line item transfers in the FY16 over the summer to clean up any discrepancies that pop up between now and the committee's next scheduled meeting in September.
 
"The adjustments are true adjustments to the budget where we've spent less or more relative to what we budgeted and I'm making the adjustments," she said.
 
"For example, we're spending $5,000 more on substitute teachers than we expected but we have extra money available from staff development lines," Caplinger said.
 
The committee also gave Rauscher the authority to transfer up to $40,000 from the existing school choice reserves to cover anticipated and unanticipated expenses that may arise; the $40,000, if used, would put the district at about the $38,000 remainder, she projected.
 
If she needs to go beyond that $40,000, the School Committee asked her to consult with its newly created finance subcommittee.
 
The committee earlier this year decided to create a subcommittee modeled on a similar subgroup used by the neighboring Mount Greylock Regional School Committee. On Wednesday, during its annual reorganization, the School Committee named to its finance subcommittee the panel's newest member, Joe Bergeron, and is chairman, Dan Caplinger, who was re-elected chairman earlier in the meeting.
 
The plan is for the finance subcommittee to meet each month prior to the full committee's meeting so the subgroup can delve more deeply into the minutiae of the district's finances and make a report to the full group.
 
Finances and cost containment also came up Wednesday in the context of a burgeoning Northern Berkshire Shared Services Initiative, which Caplinger characterized as a byproduct of the Berkshire County Education Task Force.
 
The initiative aims, among other things to: "Explore opportunities to expand on shared services among our school districts while maintaining and enhancing high academic standards for all of our students. Explore opportunities to reduce current and anticipated future higher costs through shared services. [And identify] specific shared services for initial focus and other longer range collaborations."
 
Caplinger sought and received a vote of his committee to sign a memorandum of agreement for the shared services initiative. He emphasized that, at this point, the initiative is in the exploratory stage, and the vote did not commit the district to any specific cooperative arrangements.
 
"Basically, it's an expression of interest at this point," Caplinger said.
 
The initiative is looking for buy-in from the Adams-Cheshire, Lanesborough, Mount Greylock, North Adams, Northern Berkshire Vocational and Williamstown Elementary school districts along with the North Berkshire and Shaker Mountain school unions.
 
In other business, the School Committee discussed the outcome of last month's annual town meeting, where the school district's budget passed easily but only after voters approved an amendment to trim the budget by $27, one dollar for each year of the Side-By-Side special education prekindergarten program.
 
The reduction was a protest to the district's decision to change the preschool program for the 2016-17 school year, eliminating the full-day classroom offered in the past.
 
As has been the case since the change was announced this winter, the move was the focus of the meeting's public comment period. Steven Miller, who has frequently challenged the move, asked the committee three specific questions: 1. "Is it cheaper" to have two half-day classrooms or one full-day classroom? 2. Is a third half-day class (added just before town meeting) needed for special education students or was it added to serve more of their typically developing peers? 3. If the third half-day class is not for children on individualized education plans, why spend additional funds there rather than for some of the other items cut from the K-6 budget?
 
Miller also asked the committee to accept outside donations to pay for a full-day preschool. 
 
"Fin Comm encouraged WES to seek funding beyond the taxpayers," he said. "Thirty-five thousand dollars was pledged by the community to support the program."
 
Caplinger pressed Miller on the last point, asking who the district could approach to talk about the donation and what kinds of strings would be attached to it. Miller said he did not know the best person to talk to about the $35,000 but would find out.
 
As for the final two questions, Dias again explained that the third half-day program is being added to ensure that everyone who signed up for the Side-By-Side lottery gets a spot. He said that while not all the children require IEPs, they may have unknown needs that could be served by the pre-K program.
 
"When it comes to preschool and the importance of early childhood education, there are other risk factors that we don't know about based on them just giving us their name," Dias said. "Rather than go through a process of who has need and who doesn't, we decided to take them all.
 
"Early childhood education is designed for those children with any challenges. … For some kids, it's a learning disability. For some kids, it's poverty. For some kids, it's involvement with the [state] Department of Children and Families. If preschool can alleviate some of that, I want the children to access that."
 
As for the "protest" vote at town meeting, the School Committee discussed whether it wanted to reopen the FY17 budget and direct the administration to reinstate the full-day Side-By-Side classroom but decided not to take any action.
 
Bergeron, who was one of four candidates running for a seat on the committee based at least partly on criticism of the Side-By-Side decision, said he hopes future discussions can be less acrimonious.
 
"I think the process is the only thing we can do better," Bergeron said. "Decisions are going to be decisions and they will be deliberated and eventually have to be respected as having been made through a thoughtful process.
 
"It might mean we have more meetings where there is open discussion between the School Committee and the public so we're out there and involved in the dialogue. Public comment is great, but dialogue with the public is the most important thing."
 

Members of Girl Scout Troop 12940 make a presentation to the School Committee on a 'buddy bench' to give to the school.
Caplinger on Wednesday began moving in that direction, breaking the committee's practice of accepting public comment without response and inviting Miller back to the microphone for a give-and-take. Later in the meeting, he took comments from other residents and teachers outside the formally designated public comment period.
 
In addition to the committee's business on Wednesday, it heard a presentation from local Girl Scout Troop 12940, which informed the committee of its efforts to give the school a "Buddy Bench" for the playground.
 
The buddy bench is designed to be a place where pupils can sit during recess if they feel they don't have anyone to play with. If a child sees someone on the bench, he or she is encouraged to invite the lone child to play.
 
The fourth-grade Girl Scout troop is dedicating the school's new bench to the memory of classmate Eve Claffey, who died just before the start of the 2015-16 school year.
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