A sometimes heated discussion over how and how much to fund the regional school budget in the wake of failed overrides roiled the School Committee meeting on Wednesday, June 5 – until Superintendent of Schools Jeff Szymaniak recognized Whitman Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter.
“Today was a bad day, but tonight was a bad night here, and it’s difficult for all of us,” Carter said, listing some of the news she had to pass along already, to town employees.
Whitman now has one administrative position in the assessor’s office unfilled – in a three-person office. In the three-person Town Clerk’s office one position has not been funded. The Police Department budget was cut and two officers’ positions plus another $90,000 or so as currently not funded. Two firefighter positions were not funded and the building inspector was informed that day that his full-time job would now be a part-time job. He rejected the cut in hours and began looking for another job and said, “Good luck finding a part-time building inspector,” he told her. “He’s out as of July 1.”
The DPW was another department where two positions were not funded. The Health Department administrative assistant’s hours were reduced, another part-time clerical position at the Council on Aging was not funded.
“Veteran’s service director – I had to contact him at a conference away for the week – he just started with us, doing an excellent job, we just hired recently, I had to call him and tell him I was cutting his hours back as well,” she said. One part-time library technician position will not be funded and she “zeroed out” expenses and salaries for the park and pool, which means the entire Recreation Department is one person. While the director Kathleen Woodward’s salary has been kept, she now going to try funding the pool program with the revolving fund, but will have to cut back or cancel the Fourth of July events and the Easter events, but has already collected money toward six weeks of the summer program, so she’s going to try to manage that with most of the budget cut.
Before opening to the assessment discussion, Szymaniak had noted that it would focus on Town Meeting and election results, and information that had since been relayed to him from both communities and added he had a recommendation for the committee.
“My recommendation for the committee tonight is to lower the assessment by $1,664,730.35 for Whitman to an assessment of $19,917,568.65 – or the 4.086 percentage – and lowering Hanson’s amount by $677,333.92 to $15,775,031.08 – or 5.344. The district budget will now be $64,564,205.55 – or a 2.596 percent increase over last year, and we will need to reduce by $1,742,070.64.”
The board ultimately voted to support the recommendation, 8 to 1, with Hill abstaining.
Carter urged the Committee to support Szymaniak’s recommendation.
“Before I made any of these cuts, I had already gone through the budget,” Carter said. “I had already gone line by line and cut all the other lines to a bare minimum. When I say there is nowhere else to cut and that these will be felt by all – it’s terrible. This is drastic and anything more is going to decimate the town.”
Select Board member Justin Evans agreed, noting that, with anything less than Szymaniak’s recommendation, he said, he sees a hard time passing a budget.
Hanson Select Board Chair Laura FitzGerald Kemmett, while speaking for herself, said her intention is to set a special Town Meeting before the end of the fiscal year, so the district does not end up under a 1/12 budget.
“This is a financial failure on the town’s level, and to keep accepting it is unconscionable,” School Committee member Rosemary Hill protested. “You cannot do this and say that you’re for teachers or education.”
The School Committee was supplied with a list of 23 positions being cut district-wide.
“I did not name names,” Szymaniak said. “I put buildings to those folks, totaling a reduction in force of three people. We’ve done a nice job of trying to do what’s best to eliminate unemployment.”
Thirteen staff members will be transferred to positions now open because of resignations, retirements and non-renewals or that are currently being filled by long-term substitutes. Positions still open for the 2025-26 school year that need to be filled are an ASD program teacher, a PACES program teacher, multiple inclusion teachers, a school psychologist for a year, an occupational therapy, a speech therapy, chemistry, math and English teachers.
Chair Beth Stafford said that is a point that is often confusing to people – 23 positions does not necessarily mean 23 people. She pointed to the Superintendent’s explanation, but she added, the positions being cut were ones the district added after COVID to help students achieve.
“It really is, to me, disheartening to see that we’re losing our interventionists and some of the position teachers,” she said. Library aides being cut at the two middle schools was also had because they hadn’t had a librarian for years. The WIN (What I Need) program, too, has been successful at the high school has also helped improve grades.
Member Stephanie Blackman noted that cuts to interventionists will also mean more work for teachers, which she doesn’t see as fair.
“I understand the thought process behind every cut on this piece of paper,” Committee member Christopher Marks said. “I hate every single one of them. … But I also understand that that there’s some level of compromise that’s going to have to happen at some point.”
“There is no good solution here, no matter what,” member Glen DiGravio said.
Kniffen said she is opposed to cutting curriculum and they will have to look elsewhere to cut that $400,000. She also recommended holding to the minimum local contribution the state requires from the towns.
The initial proposed operating assessment to Hanson was a 9.87-percent increase, and for Whitman, 9.65-percent increase. Hanson’s minimum local contribution to the state for fiscal 2026 is 7.5 percent, so W-H’s additional assessment is really about 2 percent, according to Kniffen. Whitman’s increased by 7.1 percent.
“This is not a proposal that’s going to make anybody happy, but I don’t understand how we as a School Committee can propose a budget increase that is less than what the state is telling the towns they minimally need to pay,” she said. “I think that 7 percent number … the state is saying, ‘You must minimally pay this percentage more from what you paid last year,’ then I think that those are numbers we should go with. I think that that’s fair, I think that is not us – the School Committee – but it is going to be turned around to be us, the School Committee … But it’s so important to have the facts out there and these are the facts.”
Because W-H is a hold-harmless district, it’s minimum local contribution thresholds will continue to increase, Kniffen reminded the Committee. But her bigger concern was saving curriculum.
“We cannot cut curriculum that we literally just got,” she said. “Curriculum doesn’t make great teachers, but it makes sure everyone in the third grade [for example] is on the right track and we’re pacing at the same rate.”
Curriculum cuts are also in the works – especially at the elementary grades where the district has lacked programs linked to middle schools for 20 years. They may have to look toward state “free curriculum” which carry a cost for training faculty, so it is not really free.
“I believe we put forth a budget to both communities, we asked the communities to vote on that budget, and they told us where they were at,” Szymaniak said. “I don’t believe that we have a sound educational budget. This reduction takes away a lot of what my administration has done since 2018, but it’s the number I think we need to work with tonight. I fear a 1/12 in the month of July and the month of August and school will be drastically different in September, if we’re still on a 1/12.”
Business Manager Stephen Marshall then calculated two different assessment changes, using Whitman’s numbers and saving curriculum would bring the budget increase to 3 percent variation on a level-service budget, or a 6-percent increase for Hanson ($578,554.23 more) and a 4.89-percent assessment for Whitman ($909,465.23 more) for a level-service budget of $64,488,020.84.
Using Kniffen’s suggestion of basing the town’s increases as in addition to the minimum local contribution thresholds, Hanson would see about a 7-percent increase ($427,252.32 more) and Whitman’s would be an 8.1-percent increase ($671,624.19 more) in a total budget increase of 3.618 percent for a budget of $65,207,398.
Szymaniak said a benchmark of a 3 percent overall annual budget increase has been a district goal for several years.
“Can we vote on that right now,” DiGravio asked, and made a motion to do so for the 3.618-percent increase ($65,207,398) based on Kniffen’s suggestion. He later changed his mind and backed Szymaniak’s recommendation.
“Whitman Select Board member Shawn Kain, a member of the town’s budget working group, agreed the budget confronting the district makes for a difficult conversation.
“Hearing some of the cuts that are going to occur is terrible … terrible, terrible. Over the last 15 years, following the budget pretty closely, this is not good news,” he said. “I think the tension I’m feeling, though, is we could have the same conversation about the police and fire department, or the [other] departments in town and it would be as heart-breaking.”
While the School Committee is confronting a budget that continues to be educationally unsound, Kain noted that Whitman has flaws in public safety that the town must deal with now.
“It’s not something I could support, and I don’t say that lightly,” he said, noting that, if Whitman had to reduce the town budget by $600,000 in addition to what they’re cutting now that the override failed, would be devastating. Right now, $800,000 of the $900,000 Whitman has raised in new revenue is going to the schools.
“We’d have to lay off more people that I couldn’t really justify,” Kain said. “It’s terrible, but that’s the situation we’re in,” Kain said.
The district provided its initial budget, maintaining level services, although not educationally sound, in February, he said of the budget timeline. The School Committee then approved a level-service budget and sent an assessment to each community to support that budget. Both towns had communicated early that they could not support the assessment as presented without the support of a Proposition 2.5 override.
School district administrators and School Committee members were invited to meetings with the select boards and finance committees in both towns. Whitman passed its budget at their May 3 Town Meeting on the contingency of an approved override. Hanson passed its budget Article 4 the same day, however the school budget line was not the figure voted by the School Committee. They passed Article 5, containing the correct assessment number, which was contingent on an override.
Informational meetings about the override were held in both towns to which school officials and committee members were invited. Taxpayers voted on the override in the town elections May 17, overwhelmingly voting against an override.
Whitman is holding a special Town Meeting at 6 p.m., Wednesday, June 11 to see if voters will approve a new article 2, and are waiting to see if the School Committee votes to send the same assessment or to reassess.
Hanson, to date, has not set a new Town Meeting because they have an approved budget in Article 4 from May 5, but the School Committee must approve it since that was not the assessment provided to the town. Hanson’s Select Board planned to take up the assessment discussion again on June 10 and awaited the School Committee’s vote.
Szymaniak circulated in the Committee member’s information packed an email from Hill repeating her comments – with more detail – asserting that the district legally has an approved budget, citing regulations of the Department of Elementary Education (DESE).
If the district does not have an approved budget, the DESE commissioner will place W-H on a 1/12 budget, until a budget is approved by both towns. It would, in effect be a cut of $3.375 million to the proposed operating budget and it reverts back to the district’s fiscal 2025 numbers (last fiscal year).
Calculating the cost of unemployment, the real cut is $3.03 million, and Szymaniak said he would have to administer 48 reduction in force (RIF) notifications.
In Whitman, a 1/12 scenario would increase the district budget by 2.596 percent and assesses Whitman at 4.086 percent and Hanson would see a 5.344 percent. The Hanson scenario and increases the district budget by 1.525 percent, assessing Hanson at 3.594 percent and Whitman at 1.933 percent.
“Tonight, I believe we need to listen to what the taxpayers say and lower the assessment,” Szymaniak said. “I also believe we do not have an approved budget, and we need an approved budget by July 1. To not have a budget only RIFs 48 staff members and I cannot, in good faith, hire for critical vacancies.”
Szymaniak also advised that, if the Committee believes that something illegal or inappropriate had been done by either town in this process, the district would consult legal counsel and take action in the future.
“Any litigation now will stall our process and place us in a 1/12 for an inordinate amount of time and hurt our students,” Szymaniak said.
Hill maintained that, “We have a budget, so there wouldn’t need to be a 1/12 budget,” after Szymaniak’s lengthy explanation to the contrary.
“The towns disregarded the district and school finance document … after trying to do something similar to this last year,” Hill continued, saying she has reviewed multiple towns that challenged a similar budget scenario. “In five different school [districts], the schools were correct. What we voted was a bill … To move forward with this vote means we lost the opportunity to save 24 teachers.”
She accused the towns of tricking the School Committee into moving forward without doublechecking, added that no one from the Committee voted for anyone to negotiate with the towns, anything different, or give a different number than was voted by the School Committee.
“They went rogue,” she said. “This was a rogue behavior.”
Conceding that there are things like capital project that can be done within the budget or delaying staff reductions under a 1/12 budget, Hill said, she argued it would be a choice on the administration’s part.
Vice Chair Hillary Kniffen said she reached out to DESE’s regional governance office about the budget process because she had questions about how the School Committee’s assessment was placed on both town warrants. She said Michele Griffin of that office pointed her to the Prop 2/5 regulations, which states “contingent appropriations may be used for appropriations for operating budgets, capital projects and regional school assessments.”
“Right now, Whitman doesn’t have an appropriated number for the schools, so if we go on a 1/12 budget, Whitman does not have money appropriated to pay that bill,” Kniffen said. “So, if we leave tonight and don’t have a number for Whitman to present at their Town Meeting, Wednesday [June 11], we are in way worse shape than we are right now.”
She termed that a major concern she has, so she advises the committee’s time was better spent discussing the actual budget instead of the process.
Moser agreed that the committee’s time would be better spent evaluating where to go from here.