The School Committee, in a special meeting Monday night, unanimously voted to set a 15.1 percent increase — $3,349,712 — in the assessments to the towns in support of a level-service budget. The fiscal 2020 budget has not yet been certified.

Based on enrollment, Whitman would pay 59.82 percent, in dollars a total assessment of $15,273,983 — an increase of $2,003,798 over the current assessment. Hanson would pay 40.18 percent, a total assessment of $10,259,255 — an increase of $1,345,914 over the current assessment.

The proposed budget is up by 5.4 percent overall.

“I can’t see going backwards,” said School Committee member Fred Small. “I think it will be up to the taxpayers to decide and we should let them decide. I would urge everyone to support staying the same for another year, as horrible as that is.”

“It seems to me there’s an erosion of public schools,” School Committee member Robert Trotta said. “It’s a sad commentary on the way in which public schools are looked at. It’s a shame. I think public schools are probably one of the best investments for a community and I would be disheartened if we could not support these people that we have.”

He said he would not support less than a level-service budget.

“I would love this to include some programs that we were bringing back, but I know, realistically, it can’t happen so I’m not going to ask for anything less than 15.1 [percent],” said School Committee member Alexandria Taylor.

The Committee decided to wait for a full end-fiscal year accounting report before making a decision on whether to tap into excess and deficiency because that account is down to $961,237 at this time.

Of the $8,131,147 in costs for programs mandated by the state, only $2,100,957 of those costs are fully funded, leaving $5,067,542 unfunded or underfunded for the Whitman-Hanson Regional School District. [See tables, page 3].

“It’s not just Chapter 70 money, it’s not just the governor’s budget with funding regional districts and funding towns, it’s the under-funded and unfunded mandates that are bleeding our district right now,” Superintendent of Schools Jeffrey Szymaniak said.

Special education costs have also increased suddenly in recent days, including one incident in which a teacher ended up in urgent care because of a bite from a student with “social-emotional and cognitive issues” and another student who was making suicidal threats. Between the two issues and transportation costs, the special education budget increased by $650,000, for which Szymaniak is hoping to use Circuit Breaker funds.

“These are our students,” he said, noting he has also been approached by parents asking when gifted and talented students would benefit from programs. “We do a lot of here … and now some of these under-funded and unfunded mandates are now taking away from the decisions we make educationally for our students.”

After district officials pared $292,000 from the budget over the last two weeks “without affecting any people” in the district. That figure includes a $197,000 savings in insurances, a reduction of $20,000 from the substitute teacher line, a cut to the Chromebook initiative approved last year by $53,000, a $2,000 reduction to facilities general supplies, $5,000 from instructional supplies and a class Szymaniak is currently taking — at $10,000 — is a one-time expense that won’t appear in the fiscal 2020 budget. The budget for legal costs was trimmed by $10,000, funds for the English Language Learners program were cut by $10,000, the summer school budget was cut by $5,000.

Before the cuts, the budget would have required a 16.4 percent increase to reach level service.

“The things that we’ve already cut so far, the $292,000 [in cuts] are not people, anywhere else, we are going to start cutting folks,” Szymaniak said.

He supplied the committee with breakdown of how potential budget cuts would effect general staff, supply and program funds as well as how assessment cuts would hit class size.

“[It’s] something we’ve really tried hard to keep under wraps, so to speak — not to hide anything from the public, but to not have people get nervous and bail, or leave, or decide to apply elsewhere,” Szymaniak said. He said there was also a concern that parents were already opting to send their children to other schools, such as South Shore Tech, parochial high schools or charter schools.

Hanson Middle School is forecasting that about 106 eighth-grade students were planning to attend WHRHS, with 27 accepted at South Shore Tech and six private or Catholic School applications out.

Whitman Middle School, meanwhile, with 201 eighth-graders, has reported that 34 have already been accepted at South Shore Tech, with another 20 on a wait list and 13 applying to Catholic school.

“Those numbers I haven’t seen since I’ve been here,” Szymaniak said. “I think the word is out that there might be severe budget cuts and our eighth-graders are seeking to go to school elsewhere.”

A level-funded budget, in which no increase to the bottom line would require program cuts, Szymaniak said 54 positions — or 48 people — would be lost in the areas of tech support, counseling, foreign languages, teachers and all three school levels, facilities, paraprofessionals, administrative support, the high school library, elementary music, reading and district leadership.

Education programs hit would include elementary math, music and science; middle school Spanish and related arts; electives; financial literacy; district curriculum coordinators and reading.

Class sizes would also be impacted with elementary and middle schools losing one teacher per grade level and the high school losing one teacher per department.

“I told district staff today that we’re going to advocate for our people and our programs, things that we’ve committed to that are in the best interests of our students and our communities,” he said. Both school choice, for students moving out of district, and charter school numbers are both up.

The School Committee on Wednesday, Feb. 27 supported a suggestion by Whitman Town Administrator Frank Lynam that they conduct talks with school union representatives, similar to talks he is having with town unions, as Whitman works to negotiate a two-year wage freeze.

It is part  of Whitman officials’ efforts to find a sustainable solution to a $3.5 million school budget shortfall. The School Committee was slated to meet with union representatives in executive sesstion Tuesday night.

A $2.5 million override and a debt exclusion for the remainder of the debt on the Whitman Police Station are also being considered by the town.

The committee also asked Superintendent of Schools Jeffrey Szymaniak and Assistant Superintendent George Ferro to provide them with a better idea how the $200,000, representing each assessment percentage, would effect the schools if there were cuts.

The school budget must be certified by March 13.

“We have a dire situation here,” School Committee Chairman Bob Hayes said. “We may have to hold Town Meeting. Is there any chance of that happening?”

Lynam said in order to kick the can down the road in that way, there has to be somewhere to reach for the funds and it isn’t there.

“Yes, Town Meeting can be delayed, but that only puts the region in a more difficult situation,” he said. “If we don’t act until June, and we go to a vote, we’re now into July before we know what the answers are and you’re now on a 1/12 budget.”

He said he intends to see a question on the May ballot, which has to be posted 45 days before.

“So we’re going to have to make some decisions in a couple of weeks,” Lynam said.

A wage freeze could save Whitman about $800,000 in school salaries, according to Szymaniak, who noted Whitman department head meetings have begun discussing the three proposed financial moves.

School Committee members voted to have the entire committee, not just the bargaining subcommittee, meet in executive session March 6 with School District bargaining units about the issue.

“That was discussed at both department head meetings [held recently in Whitman],” Szymaniak said of wage freezes. “Nothing was finalized there. We still don’t have numbers if those things don’t come to fruition, so I can’t give the committee what that impact would be. If that impact is a zero for our budget that impact would be not good.”

Teacher Jill Kain said she would support a wage freeze, as she and other teachers have in the past, but said they need some indication that they are supported in return.

“We’re willing to give up what we need to to help,” she said of her family. “We have done it and I think there’s a huge portion that would do it again. … As the budget gets tighter, our support and our classrooms and our services get less. … If you ask the staff and they say no, I wouldn’t say it’s because they don’t want to help, I would say it’s more like they feel like we’re giving all we can and everyday we’re asked to give more with less.”

She felt that other town unions might say the same thing for the same reason.

WHEA representative Kevin Kavka asked about the schedule and format of Lynam’s meeting with the other unions. Lynam said the March 4 meeting would be his first with the collective group and that he intended to work collaboratively with them.

“I had [previously] gone to them and said, ‘this is a thought,’” he said.

Lynam said Whitman’s Board of Selectmen and Finance Committee have met — and he planned to meet with his FinCom again March 5 for the sole purpose of a line-by-line review of the budget. He also planned to meet with Hanson Town Administrator Michael McCue and Accountant Todd Hassett March 5, and had a tentative plan to meet with representatives from Whitman’s collective bargaining agreements on March 4.

“The key to all this is what we see for numbers,” Lynam said. “What happens if we do get an override, what happens if we don’t. There hasn’t been enough urgency in working those numbers.”

The biggest part of the process, Lynam said, was the ability to reach a sustainable budget.

“Sustainability means living within our ability to generate revenue,” Lynam said. “Right now we generate, in new dollars, $975,000. … It’s far short.”

He questions whether voters will support an override unless the town can present a clear picture that such a move will address the town’s financial problems for several years.

Both a capital plan and budget that are now in development will help make that case he said. The capital plan can’t be viewed as a five-year plan, however, because the town does not have the revenue predictability to support that.

“Here we are, I think 65 days from Town Meeting and we’re crunching numbers,” Lynam said.

Hayes asked Lynam if he anticipated having numbers before the committee meets again on March 13.

Lynam said he would have suggested numbers — representing budgets with and without an override — by that meeting.

“Without an override, the numbers are going to have minuses in front of them — for almost everybody,” he said.

School Committee member Robert Trotta asked if there was any indication about the town’s financial situation made evident before the district began the latest round of union negotiations last year.

“When the Town Meeting voted its budget last May, it was made very clear that we were appropriating money from a non-recurring source to fund the cost for debt payments in order to balance the budget and that, in order to move forward the following year we were going to have to increase the levy,” Lynam said.

The $1.2 million that is the bottom line of this budget and was $1.2 million more than we had to spend, Lynam said. The $975,000 in new revenue for this year is $225,000 short to start, plus a $2.5 million increase.

Trotta said those figures were not in his mind when negotiations began and asked if a meeting prior to contract negotiations could have been arranged to obtain that information.

“A thought for me would be if you had come to us and said we are going to negotiate, what are your concerns, you would have had that answer,” Lynam replied.

Salaries, however, make up only 39 percent of the budget increase this year.

“Conversely, 61 percent is being driven by things that either aren’t controlled or are uncontrollable,” Lynam said. “We’re in the same boat. … It’s a community problem.”

Fixed costs have been as great a budgeting concern as unfunded mandates for school officials, but there has been a bit of good news on that front. Szymaniak noted health insurance costs for next year — forecast to increase by 5 percent — could go up by as little as 1.5 percent, for a $150,000 savings, which would help the school budget’s bottom line. It will be voted by the insurance collaborative on March 11. But out-of-district special education placements, which looked to be decreased by $200,000 could end up being a wash because of transportation costs, Szymaniak said, noting that negotiations are continuing on that front.

“I’m asking the committee at this point to stay true,” he said. “We don’t have real numbers to say [what assessment percent will be offered]. I know they still have that zero ace.”

School Committee member Fred Small said a $3.6 million budget increase is unprecedented.

“I think it’s the perfect storm of a lot of things at the same time,” he said.

The committee’s request to see an indication of how each $200,000 in potential assessment cutbacks, raised a concern over taking an à la carte approach to the school budget.

Small said identifying where the district could work with a reduced budget would be “a good thing,” especially since excess and deficiency funds have been so tight with the adoption of a more exacting budgeting software.

“Finding money is getting harder and harder every year,” said Committee member Dan Cullity.

“If we get numbers and have to cut an assessment … we will look at programs and service and the last thing we want is to cut people,” Szymaniak said. “But I need to know if it’s $3.5 million or $2.5 million.”

But if the number is $2.5 million, $1 million would be in special education costs that could be reduced if the district could afford to maintain programs that keep students in-district and reduce costs overall.

“Anything lower than level-service will cut staff,” he said.

Committee member Christopher Howard said he was not interested in anything less than a level-service budget, but added that if voters don’t support it he would have to make “some hard decisions about where I am on the committee, in the community, where my kids go to school.” He said the community needs to understand the consequences of such decisions.

“Rest assured, that this committee and anybody whose watching will have a clear view of what things would look like depending on what the moneys that are available are,” Ferro said.

Cullity asked if the cuts meant services or people?

“It will be across the board K-12,” Szymaniak said.

Hayes suggested showing what each percentage would cut, raising the question of à la carte menus of potiential cuts.

“When we make and a’ la carte menu, that is a difficult way to educate children,” Ferro said noting he and Szymaniak were the ones qualified to make those decisions. “You’re going to get 10 phone calls from 10 people who don’t want that at that level, but want that at that level.”

Hayes said he wanted to demonstrate to the public the difficulty of the decisions they face. WHRHS Principal Dr. Christopher Jones expressed concern about how the committee wanted Szymaniak and Ferro to demonstrate the impact of budget cuts.

“One of the reasons I decided to apply for the principalship here … is because of the educational vision of Mr. Szymaniak and Mr. Ferro and the reputation they have for moving education forward the way it needs to be,” Jones said. “Once you open a budget up to à la carte choices, as staunch as people want to be, people do have their own agendas and pick from different things and there’s a very real threat … even when it addresses the vision and addresses the priorities of the educational leaders, quite often it gets carved out from the vision of the educational leaders and gets eroded.”