January 2021 Letter to the Editor

Amherst School District FY22 Budget

Budget- At our November meeting the Board asked the administration to review the budget again and recommend cuts to reduce the proposed budget to a number closer to our goal of matching the default budget.  At the December meeting, the administration came back with 3 options.

  1. Cut 6 total teaching positions, including 3 current positions and 3 proposed positions. This would revert to six teachers per grade from K-6.
  2. Cut all paraprofessionals in kindergarten.
  3. Cut all sports and extracurricular activities at AMS and Clark-Wilkins.

The Board dove deeply into discussions about each option.

  • Cutting teachers will create class sizes of 23-27 in most grades. These class sizes would rank as the 5th highest class sizes in the state for grades 1-2 and 2nd highest for grades 3 through 8. The projected enrollment for incoming kindergarteners has us at 20 students per class. Given all that data the Board was uncomfortable cutting any current teachers or paraprofessionals at this time.
  • Since kindergarten enrollment is difficult to project accurately the Board asked for continuing updates on the 2021-22 enrollment. This is aimed to make a proper decision about kindergarten staffing (teachers and paraprofessionals) based on real numbers as they come in. There are myriad options to reduce unneeded staffing while meeting our class size goals. It is the Board’s goal to avoid surplus staffing.
  • The Board is aware that extracurricular activities and sports are important to students and participating in these activities can lead to higher grades. Due to this the Board is not ready to cut these activities yet but have asked administration to look at increasing participation fees for students.
  • The Board looked deeply into the roles of all administrators at the schools so see if any positions could be cut there. It was decided that, until all of Clark-Wilkins can be brought into one building, administration cannot be reduced.

The final decision was that one of the proposed teaching positions would be cut at Clark-Wilkins as well as approximately $100,000 in various other items, such as classroom furniture.  Those cuts combined with other reductions and corrections made earlier in the process have seen over $779,000 removed from the proposed budget.

We will have an official proposed budget after our January meeting, prior to the public hearing in early January.

Deliberative- The Board will be hearing from the school district moderator at our Jan. 4 meeting regarding safety measures that are available for an in-person Deliberative. This will allow us to decide whether to move forward with a typical deliberative session or a remote deliberative session that HB 1129 affords us. If you miss this meeting recordings of all our meetings are available on the SAU39 YouTube page.

Upcoming Meetings- All future meetings can be found on the SAU Website’s Calendar.
      Jan. 4 at 6 p.m.- Amherst School District Public Hearing Planning Session
      Jan. 13 at 7 p.m.- Amherst School District Public Hearing
      Jan. 19 at 6 p.m.- Amherst School District Board Meeting
      Jan. 21 at 6 p.m.- SAU Board Meeting

Regards,

Elizabeth Kuzsma, Chair
Tom Gauthier, Vice Chair
Terri Behm
Josh Conklin
Ellen Grudzien