Still facing massive cuts -- more than 50 staff may be lost
Updates:
- At the 1/14/25 Regional School Committee Meeting (watch here), Dr. Xi and her team provided a budget update for the Regional Schools (middle and high school). The exact deficit amount isn’t yet known as the four towns that fund the Regional Schools are still determining funding for next year, but the deficit is likely between $1-1.4 million. Preliminarily this translates to eliminating 11 positions at the high school ( 4 professional, 4 clerical, 3 paraprofessionals), 8 positions at the middle school (4 professional, 1 clerical, 3 paraprofessionals), and 5 positions at the central office (see Page 16 of the presentation for details). See the coverage in the Hampshire Gazette here.
- We haven’t seen an update on the elementary school budget deficit, but last we heard it was approximately $1.4 million, so likely in the range of 25-30 positions.
- School Committee Member Bridget Hynes very aptly referred to the fight for school funding as “upside down backwards planning” whereby the towns come up with numbers they like rather than starting at a place of talking about how much money we actually need to fund our schools. The budgets that Dr. Xi is currently working on don’t even reflect level services for next year and some amount of cuts seem inevitable – the question right now is how bad will it be?
- At the state level, Senator Jo Comerford has let constituents know that Senate President Karen Spilka and Minority Leader Bruce Tarr have both indicated that they plan to take up K-12 education funding reform this session. This is great news that may help us in the future – and we should push for it – but it won’t help us this year.
Upcoming meetings/actions:
- Regional Schools Four Towns Meeting – Saturday February 8th 9:00-11:00 AM in the ARMS library. At this meeting, officials from Amherst, Leverett, Shutsebury and Pelham will discuss funding for the Regional Schools for next year, including the total amount of funding to provide and how to break down the funding among the four towns. Ahead of this meeting, please email your town officials and tell them that we are counting on them to provide at least level funding for our schools for next year. See our Resources page for links of how to find and contact your Amherst Town Councilors. While there is no role for the public at this meeting, any member of the public can attend and listen to the discussion. Even if you can only join for a portion, it’s important for our elected officials to know that we are paying attention.
- There is a vacancy on the Amherst Finance Committee for a resident member. If you or someone you know is interested in serving on this committee, please see this link. The Amherst Finance Committee makes a lot of really important decisions that impact our school funding and it would be great to have representation on the committee from constituents who really value school funding.
- In-person get together/info session – We are hoping to hold an in-person get together/info session in the next month or so. This would be an opportunity to connect with other community members who want to push for more education funding as well as hear some general information about how the funding process works and how individuals can make a difference. We also want to start thinking about electing more school/family friendly town officials later this year. If you are interested in helping with this in any capacity, please get in touch.
- Please continue to let your networks know that our schools are in trouble. We are still looking at massive cuts again for next year. We really need to mobilize and spread the word.