WHITMAN – Zero raises, layoffs, closing departments, and using more free cash to balance the town budget could be the cost to Whitman of a failure to reach accord on a school budget, according to Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter.
“As I really got into it, I didn’t think that I would have to hit every single one of those to reach the number,” she said. “I had to decimate the budget and the only reason is because of the difference the School [Committee] certified from 5 to 11 percent. Call it what you want, but had they come in at 5 percent I would not be suggesting an override this year.”
She told the Select Board on Tuesday, March 26 that everything is on the table as the town seeks to balance the budget following the School Committee’s vote to certify a $63.5 million level-service budget last week. The Select Board has to vote on whether to place an override on the Town Election ballot at its next meeting, Tuesday, April 9.
“These reductions in the budget are drastic and debilitating to the town if an override is not put forth at the May annual Town Meeting,” Carter said during a joint meeting between the Select Board and the Finance Committee on Tuesday, March 26, as she listed the cuts she had to make as she worked all weekend to balance the fiscal 2025 budget.
“We’re here to listen,” said Finance Chair Rick Anderson, who said his committee had completed its meetings with budget managers of all departments and had scheduled meetings with town boards that night. “I know Mary Beth and [Assistant Town Administrator] Kathy [Keefe] are working very diligently on a challenging budget.”
Carter began by emphasizing her connection and commitment to Whitman schools – and that of her family, from her six siblings to her three children and three grandchildren, who “are or will be attending schools in the district.”
“Four of my siblings have spent their careers in education and administrators at the grade school level, the middle school level and the high school level,” she said. “I’ve always been pro-schools and pro-education, so for anyone to think otherwise, they would be mistaken.”
She said, however, that she is “disheartened” because the efforts of her office to hold meetings between the town and the school district earlier than in past years, failed to have a more positive and collaborative certified operational assessment for Whitman.
“I am only speaking for myself and not for the [Select Board], when I say that I feel that this year and every year going forward, that the district should certify their budget understanding that any amount that the district certifies each year over 5 percent, will need to be placed on an annual Town Meeting warrant as an override article and a subsequent ballot question at the annual Town Election for an operational override for the schools,” she said. “It would simplify the budget process each year for everyone.”
She added it would leave the question of increasing funding for the district up to the voters.
“The town has worked very hard to reduce all department budget requests for fiscal 2025 to ensure that an operational override is not put forth to our taxpayers his year,” Carter said. “I feel that there is, however, some light at the end of the tunnel.”
That light takes the form of an unfunded pension liability the town has been funding through Plymouth County Retirement, expected to be retired in 2029. The expected new annual amount will be “significantly lower than the assessments currently budgeted,” she explained.
In fiscal 2025, however, that assessment is $3,208,051. But by fiscal 2030, Carter hopes $1.5 million of $2.5 million saved will be put toward Whitman’s OPEB liability, allowing the remainder to be used to fund town departments.
But for this year, she painted a bleaker picture.
While the School Committee is charged with putting forth a budget for the district, I am charged with putting forth a budget for the [Select Board] that is balanced and meets the needs of all departments,” she said. That charge takes the shape of two warrant articles for the May Town Meeting.
The budget certified by the School Committee on March 20 with an assessment increase of 11.03 percent to Whitman, Carter said she has been tasked to present a dual budget to Town Meeting – the 5 percent projected increase the town anticipated as a school assessment as a “TA budget” and an 11.03 percent assessment increase offered as an “alternate budget,” reflecting the budget certified by the School Committee.
The alternate budget reflects the “potential impacts and reductions necessary if the district’s certified budget increase is put forth without an override,” Carter said, providing a stark breakdown of what that might mean.
Those cuts would mean “all non-union employee raises were eliminated for fiscal 2025, we laid off the following positions: three police officers, three firefighters, one DPW employee, one employee in the clerk’s office, one employee in the treasurer-collector’s office, one employee in the assessor’s office, two part-time [Council on Aging] employees, our technology specialist, we’ve also added in closing the library,” Carter said. “We also included in that budget, shutting down the Recreation Department.”
Three other full-time town employees would see their jobs cut to part-time hours.
Closing the library would also carry the financial sting of lost state aid as the town would lose its library certification and would need to operate for a full year on reopening in compliance before being certified again. Whitman is expected to receive $40,817 in library state aid for fiscal 2024.
Chair Dr. Carl Kowalski echoed Carter’s connection to the schools.
“I’ve always been a schools guy, also,” he said. “I’m as concerned as she is about what’s going on this year.” A 14-year past member of the School Committee, Kowalski said a sister and his son had also served on the School Committee.
“We are school people and this is a painful year that we’re looking at right now,” he said.
Select Board member Justin Evans commended Carter’s work, noting she had been working all weekend on the budget.
“To balance a budget in just a couple of days …” he said.
Anderson deferred to Kathleen Ottina for the Finance Committee’s position, noting that she has done a lot of work reviewing the school budget.
“There is money to be found in this school budget that does not affect the quality of education for children,” she said, emphasizing that some examples of non-sustainable small class sizes could be adjusted while leaving the ESSER positions alone.
Ottina expressed dismay that an email she sent to school officials with recommendations on non-mandated busing had, so far, gone unanswered. In the letter she identified two items where costs could be trimmed, one of them being non-mandated busing, citing her service for the past two years as a non-voting member of the Regional Agreement Committee.
“My one goal was to have the transportation language in the RA amended to reflect working that would more fairly assess Whitman for non-mandated busing,” she said. “Right now, the School Committee has the ability to just vote busing – mandated or non-mandated – and split it 60-40.”
They could also split it out and bill the towns for their non-mandated busing costs. The current configuration costs Whitman at least $40,000 – or $80,000 in fiscal 2025.
She said that, while considering herself a school advocate, she was disheartened by last Wednesday’s certification vote.
“They didn’t touch a penny,” Ottina said. “They didn’t touch a single item, knowing that both towns are in trouble.”
She likened it almost to a game of “chicken” to see which side blinks first.
“I don’t think we can call for a school override,” she said. “It’s not within our purview. … It’s time to call someone’s bluff.”
She said she could not support the budget as presented by the School Committee.
“They have some work to do,” Ottina said. “If we go to Town Meeting prepared to defend the budgets that our town departments need, and they haven’t made any work to get to the table and negotiate, then I don’t know what happens. … It’s a disaster.”
Select Board member Shawn Kain said it is a difficult conversation.
“Honestly, I think communities are judged by how well they have difficult conversations,” he said. “We’re talking numbers and accounting, but behind those numbers are people.”
His viewpoint was that the School Committee was saying if an override is needed, why not seek a level-service override. He didn’t see it as a way to get a budget passed at the expense of the towns.
“If we just clearly discuss our perspective and lay out what we’re trying to do, it’s a reasonable plan and I’m hoping they get on board with that,” Kain said.
Carter said the only reason she feels an operational override would be needed this year is because of the difference in the 5 percent operating assessment and the 11.03 percent put forward.
“I did what the schools did as well,” she said. “I took everybody who would be laid off or had their positions reduced and I added in [$400,000 in] unemployment costs.”
Carter also asked what departments could do to increase fees. The Fire Department is raising ALS 1 fees, the treasuer/collector is increasing demand fees to $25 from $25, she also asked the Select Board office and Police Department to increase fees as well.

School Committee on Wednesday, March 13 were meeting to figure out the impacts of financial challenges to the budget exactly four years after the district had to shut down – initially for only two weeks – in 2019 at the beginning the COVID-19 pandemic – a fact pointed to by Superintendent of Schools Jeffrey Szymaniak as that pandemic’s effects are still being felt.
“It was Friday, the 13th, the day before we were supposed to go to the state championship basketball game for the first time ever,” he recalled. “I was on a call with Commissioner Riley of DESE, who was explaining what was happening in terms of COVID [then referred to mainly as the coronavirus].”
At the time, Riley explained that school closings were a local decision/superintendent decision. He then had a conference call with about 25 superintendents from area school districts, who decided to unilaterally close school for two weeks.
“If you remember, then-Gov. Charlie Baker got on the news on Sunday and shut down the commonwealth for three weeks, which then became the rest of the school year,” Szymaniak said. “Since that shutdown and subsequent reopening, the district has employed many measures to deter any learning loss that happened to occur during that period of shutdown and then hybrid learning.”
Szymaniak prefaced his remarks by commenting that, while he does not usually make statements about the budget, he felt the need to do so.
“I want to kind of redefine the narrative and maybe clarify some facts that have been said publicly, and in print, about our district and out finances,” he said. “I’m really proud of where we’re at right now.”
Budget decisions facing the School Committee now include whether to cut staff and how many.
“If we have to cut, we have to cut,” Szymaniak said after outlining the ways the budget would need to be reduced. “I understand that. This is what we’re looking at. The budget that was presented to the committee as far as operations and facilities, we trimmed – we’re not even looking at a 3-percent increase in those line items.”
The Whitman budget earmarked the schools at a 5-percent assessment and Hanson put us where we asked for in the original 5-percent increase overall – closer to a 10-percent increase to their assessment.
The School Committee must decide on the assessments by March 20.
“These are not givens,” he said. “These are not endorsements from the superintendent… but these are realities of where we’re at.”
The district has $760,000 in excess and deficiency this year and, if needed, Szymaniak suggested $250,00 could be used to help close the deficit. Of the additional $720,000 in circuit-breaker, he suggested they take $100,000 from there. Both leave a comfortable amount in reserve in case additional special education are seen next year.
By not replacing non-renewables, retirements totaling a five-position cut another $560,000. Those reductions would reduce the deficit by $910,500. equaling a total increase to the district’s budget to 3.63 percent. The assessment to Whitman in such a scenario would be $7.87 percent and Hanson’s would be 7.68 percent.
“Below that line, and I won’t say I’m comfortable with these cuts, but these would increase some class sizes, especially at the younger grades,” he said noting that unemployment would also need to be calculated where some cuts are concerned.
“We’d be pink-slipping and laying off,” he said. As of April 1, if staff members on long-term leave do not return, the district could see a potential savings of another $100,000.
“But I can’t anticipate or count on that,” he said. By making cuts of about five positions below that could save $350,000, meaning a 3 percent overall budget increase, or a 6.64 percent assessment for Whitman and a 6.69 percent increase to Hanson – total cuts of $1,260,500 or a 5.16 assessment increase to Whitman and 5.51 percent to Hanson. That would cut – with circuit-breaker and excess and deficiency cuts – to $1,696,500.
“We have to go lower because the two towns are giving us are closer to the 5’s, we’d have to look at an additional six staff members,” Szymaniak said for a total of $426,000 or a 2.3 percent increase of the total budget.
To get to the 5.1 percent would take 16 professional position staff cuts, especially in the upper grades, calling for cuts in grade three, four and five teaching positions and bringing class sizes closer to 25.
“We wouldn’t cut any interventionists, they might bump, but that position is needed for [compliance with] the law,” Szymaniak said. “We wouldn’t touch EL staff and special education staff as we need to legally support those students. This is not what I’m asking the Committee to do tonight, but I wanted to foreshadow what is out there.”
Chair Beth Stafford said special ed paraprofessionals and teachers must also be hired for preschool students in need of those services to comply with the law.
“That increases our budget,” she said. “We can’t play with those things and people have to understand that.”
Szymaniak said academics and academic achievement are not always a subject of discussion at School Committee meetings, but he stressed they are seeing gains they haven’t seen before because it is their job.
“We’re supposed to educate kids,” he said. “We do a lot of other stuff. We talk about buses. We talk about safety. All these things are very important, but the bottom line is moms and dads and caregivers send their kids pre-school to [age] 22 for an education.”
While the COVID pandemic was very difficult, because of the stimulus funds they were able to receive and put to good use, they are at the place where academic gains are being seen.
He reminded the Committee and public that the federal government had supplied three different grants: Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) grants I, II and III to support school districts nationwide and support students.
Szymaniak pointed to ESSER funds as a target of criticism.
“There has been talk that ESSER money has been spent on positions that are no longer needed,” he said. “I disagree.”
He stressed that without ESSER funds, the district would have to make difficult decisions to cut positions in past fiscal years to comply with the law and support all students.
“ESSER funds were a tremendous asset to the W-H Regional School District and, in my opinion, we used these funds to put our students and the district in a better position than we were pre-COVID,” Szymaniak said. “However, this committee has reminded me multiple times of the fiscal cliff and the end of ESSER in September 2024.”
Today, the district is, in effect, about $850,000 short in the budget because of this cliff and $500,000 short because we used excess and deficiency [funds] last spring … which correlates to the additional staff we hired during these difficult years and to be compliant with the law.”
He added, however, that during the COVID years, the district also needed to add additional staff to confront another challenge – supporting the growing number of English Language learners who had moved into the school district.
School districts are required by law to hire staff to assist such children.
In 2021, W-H employed 3.5 English Language Learner staff and, by the 2024-25 school year it will have employed 11.
The 2015 Every Student Succeed Act, (ESSA) also found the district deficient by not supplying a multi-teired system of support for all it’s students.
Assistant Superintendent George Ferro and Director of Equity and MTSS Dr. Nicole Semas-Schneeweis had presented a review of the district’s success in helping all students during their report on its midyear assessment data [See related story.]
“Because of our commitment to the interventions and to the interventionists hired to ensure [a multi-tiered support system], our students have not only not regressed, as anticipated, but are progressing better than this district has ever seen,” Szymaniak said.
The district also has “admirable” class sizes in the all grades as a result of the Committee’s commitment to the district and past budgets presented.
“Our students are making academic gains and have their social-emotional needs met because of the prior year’s fiscal commitment made by this Committee,” he said. “I understand that we may need to eliminate or cut positions because the ask of a 5.3 percent overall increase [emphasis his] to the budget is too high for both these towns. I also understand that because we only see a $30 per-pupil increase in Chapter 70 revenue, which equals to $106,000, means that the towns of Whitman and Hanson are asked to absorb the difference, year after year, in our budget difference.”
By relying on the hope that $100,000 from the state each year will lead to imminent cuts in the future, is a “detailed topic for another meeting.”
Szymaniak suggested residents research what their towns spend on education – including vocational education.

WHITMAN – The town should have a clearer picture of the budget situation by the time it meets to review the fiscal 2025 town budget on Tuesday, March 26.
Chair Dr. Carl Kowalski, in this regular report to the board on Tuesday, March 12, thanked Whitman resident and former Finance Committee member John Galvin, Finance Committee member Kathleen Ottina and Select Board member Shawn Kain for “keeping the possibility of an override in the public eye.”
Galvin and Ottina submitted columns to the Whitman-Hanson Express last week, and Kain has submitted one for publication in this week’s issue [see page 7].
“I’d also like to thank Beth Stafford, the chair of the School Committee, for reminding us that the school’s final assessment has not been made yet,” Kowalski said. “But they will probably be making it … at their March 20 meeting. Good timing, because we will be meeting with the Finance Committee in our joint meeting on [Tuesday], March 26
“I’d just like to thank all these people for keeping these kind of tricky budget matters on people’s minds,” he said. “It’s important for us to be thinking about it.”
Assistant Town Administrator Kathleen Keefe said the municipal budget is a “work in progress.”
Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter is still working on the fiscal budget, “putting in long and hard hours on that, but I believe the next week will reveal some information that will be key.”
During the meeting, the Select Board also voted to advance the draft of the MBTA Communities community zoning amendment to the Planning Board.
A representative of the Planning Board attended the meeting to determine how the Select Board voted, to take it downstairs to his board, and plan a public hearing. The Planning Board put forth a proposed zoning amendment to be voted by the Select Board on Tuesday for that public hearing to be scheduled. Legal counsel has not completed their review of the amendment as the lawyer doing that is recovering from a recent medical procedure.
“She expects to have her review finalized prior to the public hearing, which the Planning Board plans to schedule on April 8,” Keefe said. “Town Counsel did suggest that [the] Select Board recommend putting this forth to the Planning Board, pending the final review of Town Counsel.”
It will come back to the Select Board for a final vote on April 9, which will be after the April 8 public meeting.
“It’s a tight schedule,” Keefe said. “Publications have to be posted in the newspaper – it’s a really tight deadline – which is why we’re hoping the board considers it tonight.”
Something to
celebrate
With the town of Whitman poised to celebrate its 150th anniversary in 2025, the Select Board voted to endorse appointing Richard Rosen to chair the anniversary committee. Rosen has met with Carter about the appointment since he organized the last anniversary celebration of 125 years in 2000.
“Mr. Rosen expressed an interest in organizing the 150th anniversary celebration,” Keefe said. “He’s already contacted several people who were involved in that last anniversary celebration. He already has several great ideas for the coming event, and we just want to thank Mr. Rosen for offering to organize this very important celebration.”
Vice Chair Dan Salvucci noted that Rosen had organized Whitman’s past WinterFest celebration for 20 years and “has all the connections and the volunteers.”
“I think it will be a great event.” he said.
In other business, Kowalski lauded the W-H Will program that continues to meet at WHRHS.
Noting that he had not been able to attend the meetings for a while, Kowalski said the Tuesday, March 12 morning session was an “enlightening experience,” with nine students as well as school counselors, Superintendent of Schools Jeff Szymaniak and Whitman and Hanson police and fire officials.
“Listening to the students talk, plainly and intelligently and smoothly about their activities as far as SADD is concerned, as far as mentors for their classmates who are having issues with substances or anxiety … was an uplifting couple of hours,” he said, encouraging members of the Select Board to attend as well from time to time. He also encouraged parents to attend, noting Whitman parents do not participate as much as those in some other communities do.
“I reminded myself how important that group is and how much you learn when you go,” he said.