ATHOL — The Athol-Royalston Regional School Committee Wednesday night gave taxpayers the opportunity to ask questions and offer opinions on a proposed district budget for the pending fiscal year totaling close to $24.8 million. Of the five people who showed up, three work for the school department and two were members of the public at large. No opinions were posited, and no inquiries made and, after a brief discussion among its members, the committee voted unanimously to place its stamp of approval on the plan.
The $24,793,550 spending package represents an increase of about $571,000 over the district budget for the current fiscal year. The amount of the budget which will actually come out of the pockets and purses of district taxpayers amounts to $5,364,474. Of that total, Royalston would pay $617,414, a 10.51 percent increase over this year’s assessment, while Athol would contribute $4,747,060, a jump of 5.84 percent.
The budget total includes $105,500 in payment on the district’s debt.
Committee member Lee Chauvette told the committee that the budget subcommittee met just prior to Wednesday’s meeting “and unanimously voted to recommend this budget…without any reservations.”
“We really have to start really watching how we deal with our budget,” said Chauvette. “We used a lot of reserves this year to make this budget work. We took $500,000 out of E&D (excess and deficiency) and $600,000 out of school choice ‘in’ funds, and we can only do that a couple more times.”
School choice “in” funds are those monies paid by districts whose students choose to attend ARSD rather than their home district.
“So,” Chauvette continued, “we need to look at ways of moving forward with new revenues, possibly, but also having to look at going to the towns for additional funds, and we know there’s only one way that happens and that’s with an override. I think pressure is being asserted on the state right now to do better formulations under Chapter 70 (state aid to public schools), looking at different ways of funding regional transportation, etc. All of that has to occur simultaneously with the fact we need to be able to use our reserve fund, which we currently can’t use without paying it back.”
“We need to assemble our legislative team and get that requirement lifted,” he emphasized. “It was good while they were here and did what they were supposed to do, but for us to have a little over $400,000 in (that account) – and we can’t touch it unless we pay it back from our cherry sheet the following year – is getting to be a problem. We’re going to need that money eventually. The DOR (state Dept. of Revenue) and DESE (Dept. of Elementary and Secondary Education) weren’t too positive the last time we attempted this, so I think we have to push back a little bit.”
The requirement regarding the reserve fund was established during the time the state was overseeing the Athol-Royalston Regional School District.
Superintendent Darcy Fernandes said several factors contributed to make the development of a workable budget a bit of a challenge. Those factors included a drop since FY17 of more than $125,000 in state circuit breaker funding, a loss of nearly $118,000 in Title I monies, and more than $428,000 less in grant funding.
Figures provided by Fernandes indicated the largest increases in the budget for the coming year include just over $111,000 in teaching costs, over $251,000 for fixed costs and insurance, and more than $158,000 in tuition, which includes school choice and special education.
The vote to recommend the proposed budget to voters at the Athol and Royalston annual town meetings later this spring was unanimous.
Following budget deliberations, the committee voted to reorganize. Lee Chauvette was chosen the panel’s new chair, while the post of vice chair went to Joao Baptista.