When it came time for the School Committee to discuss budget cuts outlined to meet town financial needs, member David Forth forcefully argued that there was nothing to discuss, and everything for students to lose [see related story].
“What we are looking to do is promote student achievement,” he said. “So, by doing this, by reducing our assessments, by cutting these jobs, we are once again bailing the community out [from] their lack of responsibility and they want to blame the schools … when, really, they are not doing their jobs.”
He said there has been a pattern of the towns failing to invest state funds, as far back as education reform in 1993, to help themselves catch up to where they needed to be in contributions to the schools’ funding formula, while the state did.
“[There has been] a lack of investment in our community that has put us in this situation, whether it is the Great Recession, the opioid epidemic, a pandemic, generations of students are suffering,” Forth said that officials’ actions speak louder than words when services and jobs are cut. “I mean, look at me. … I’m glad to be here, but it should be a little bit disgusting that a student feels they have to run to bring change and, furthermore, that the community that elects them feels they have a better opportunity to bring change than the people who are currently sitting in that seat.”
Pounding the table he implored the committee to make a responsible decision for students.
“That’s our contituents,” he said. “Let’s represent them, let’s respect them. Let’s care about them.”
Member Glen DiGravio said he appreciated Forth’s impassioned plea on behalf of students.
“I hear everything you guys are saying,” he said, also mentioning Dawn Byers’ concerns about class size and Hillary Kniffen’s about programs W-H doesn’t have that other towns do have. “David, I love your passion and I love that you care so much about the kids.”
But, DiGravio noted, they are not elected only by the parents of students, but by elder couples on fixed budgets and residents trying to make mortgage payments.
Member Fred Small had led off the discussion recalling a comment he had made the previous November: “If we want to fix it, we have to fix it right,” he said. “If we needed an override, we needed to have it structured so that it’s not a Band-Aid.”
But he argued that as the budget is now structured, if the town select boards and finance committees have a separate line for an override for the schools’ portion, it is a Band-Aid and the school district is back in the same position without adding the product or the programs it should be doing and let the taxpayers decide.
“They’re the ones footing the bill and its up to us to make the case [that] this is what we should have, this is what we need to have,” he said, ticking off offering such as languages in the middle schools and the robotics program. “But if we’re going to do it, we need to do it right.”
He said his big fear is that people will feel they’ve given the schools money and they’re done for five years.
“The problem isn’t the towns,” he said. “The problem is the state – it’s the way they fund Chapter 70. … It’s a horrible, horrible situation that we’re stuck in.”
Forth said that, while Small made a lot of great points, and reminded the Committee that March 2021 was the only time during his tenure in office that its members unanimously supported the budget after Superintendent of Schools Jeff Szymaniak argued that, in the wake of the pandemic as the responsible move. A couple of weeks later, he said, Szymaniak asked “for the sake of partnership” that the committee reduce its assessments by $775,000.
“We took those mental health services – the interventionists – and rolled it into what, at that point in time was ESSER [Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief] II,” Forth said. “State aid, basically.”
That vote failed 6-2-1, and the assessment passed the following week by and 8-2 vote, which Forth opposed because he did not like the idea of using one-time funding to finance the operating budget, knowing the schools would need those positions long-term.
“One of the concerns at that time was that we were putting a Band-Aid on the budget,” Forth recalled.
Last year, the committee voted to roll $500,000 from excess and deficiency over into the budget – another move with which he disagreed.
“I did not show up for that meeting, because it was to my knowledge, and we’ve talked about this publicly that a predetermined deal was made on what that figure should be,” Forth said. “Out of protest, I did not show up to that particular meeting.”
He also took issue with the habit of select boards in particular, to refer to “school overrides” when talking about finances.
“The way I see that is poor public policy on their end and a lack of accountability, because when you’re looking at the excess levy capacity – the 2 ½ that they do not utilize fully – over the last decade, they left – the town of Whitman, in particular – left $4.1 million on the table,” Forth charged. “Even if they collected half of that, we would not be in the position that we are now.”
In 2016, not collecting to capacity led to devastating cuts, and in 2019, 19.2 jobs were cut, leaving teachers crying in hallways and motivating students at the high school to get involved, sending out a district email.
Forth said that none of the School Committee members responded to that email, but a parent did and spoke with the students about the levy, giving the students information they used in interviewing teachers throughout the district.
“The teachers told me they were going on Google to develop their curriculum,” he said. “How quickly we forget it was just a few years ago that teachers did not have the tools they needed to succeed at the earlies levels, building the foundation blocks for our most important assets, our youth – our students.”
While School Committee members are elected by taxpayers and people “old enough to vote,” their constituents are actually the students, Forth said, echoing information underscored to school officials and committee members attended a recent Mass. Association of School Committees meeting.
Forth also spoke about the Madden Report, which is the basis for Whitman’s current budgeting philosophy, and is being adopted in Hanson as well. That report had urged an operational override for Whitman in 2020 or 2021, but that was not done. That override was designed to adequately fund all town departments.
Hanson is not dealing with the need for a $5 million operational override recommendation for the same purpose.
“Next year, when we kick this down the road again, you’ll have no one to blame but yourselves,” Forth said.
Vice Chair Christophe Scriven agreed with Small that it does not make sense to go to an override when “we’re providing a less than level-service budget.”
“It doesn’t make any sense to me to cut this budget and then go and try to fund it through an override,” Scriven said.
“We have difficult decisions to make,” Committee member Dawn Byers said, asking whether the budget aligns with the School Committee’s goals and strategic plan, recalling a report from the previous week when the panel learned that high-quality curriculum had not been invested in from 2001 to 2018.
“We are now faced with going backwards,” she said, noting that when the high school was built in 2005, it was shiny and new but the cracks on the inside – curriculum shortcomings in particular – on the inside were not seen.
She said she also has questions about the budget in terms of finding savings and class size inequity across the district.
“I really want to understand what I’m voting on and what the impact is going to be on the students,” she said, specifically citing which teachers are retiring or facing layoffs.
Assistant Superintendent George Ferro said every principal is responsible for educating students the best that they can, but said the district faces a unique situation with the two middle schools. The staff at Hanson Middle School has teachers in transition – either at the end of their careers or just starting.
That allows a principal, despite the school’s dwindling population, to have veteran teachers teaching more than one subject to reduce class size in grade six. In seventh and eighth grade, split team teaching allows mixing faculty members to also lower class size.
In Whitman, there are high enough student numbers that there are two full teaching teams at every grade.
Scriven noted the committee hires and entrusts a superintendent to work with his staff to make the best decisions they can for the students.
“We aren’t privy, nor should we be, to every individual factor that goes into their decisions,” he said. “We should absolutely continue to advocate for students and the district in general, but we need to understand that we’re not superintendents, or assistant superintendents, we’re School Committee members – and we’re one of a group of 10 and we have to keep that in mind.”
Hillary Kniffen said she finds it dangerous to pit departments against each other, particularly departments that services people who don’t have a voice – which are the kids.
“That’s who we’re representing,” she said. “That’s who we serve.”
She said no teachers were hired to teach with ESSER funds, which were used to fund positions to support kids in the wake of the pandemic that the schools were legally required to hire anyway.
“We’re not asking for an exorbitant budget,” she said. “We don’t have anything extra in our budget to cut.”