Some preliminary discussion of the proposed FY25 school budget at the School Committee Budget & Finance Subcommittee
The Budget & Finance Subcommittee of the Greenfield School Committee met about a month ago (22 Jan 2024), the main topic being the FY25 budget. I'm just catching up on it now.
Music programs across the district were a big topic of conversation at this meeting, with Subcommittee Chair Martini and Member Deneeve had a lot of questions for Superintendent DeBarge around the district's music offerings, picking up on the conversation from back in the spring/summer of last year.
The Superintendent's approach to the music programs/offerings (such as they are) does not seem to have changed much from back then, essentially saying that if the School Committee says the schools should do it and provides funding, she will find a way to make it work. She once more cites the low enrollment levels in music elective at the high school and seems to characterize music at the elementary schools and the middle school as a way to fit contractually obligated teach prep time into the schedule.
There was also some discussion of returning Spanish classes to the middle school. The superintendent said that she is planning to consider that as part of redistricting and the move of fifth and eight grades the year after next. There will be staffing changes required to support those moves; anyone hired now might then be impacted when those changes happen. The subcommittee mostly seemed fine with this approach.
I had been anticipating some discussion of the assistant superintendent role that caused a minor kerfuffle during the Communications from the Superintendent at the 21 Feb City Council meeting but there was nary a mention of it.
More broadly, there were several references and comments in this meeting about the difficulty the district has in filling open positions. According to DeBarge, there are several positions that have been open for more than a year; even if new positions are created, she seems to have concerns about being able to actually fill them. This concern also came up in the subcommittee's discussion at this meeting regarding expanding the district's music offerings.
The School Committee has accepted the superintendent's proposed FY25 budget.
I spent this past Wednesday evening at the John Zon Community Center for the Greenfield School Committee's public hearing on the proposed FY25 budget for the Greenfield Public Schools. The hearing ran about two and a half hours and included public comment, a presentation by Superintendent Christine DeBarge providing an overview of her proposed budget, and a line-by-line walk-through of the budget by DeBarge and Andy Paquette, the district's business manager.
At the end of the evening and following a fair amount of discussion and Q&A with both DeBarge and Paquette, the School Committee voted to accept the superintendent's proposed budget as the School Committee's budget. Mayor DeSorgher abstained, but all other members voted in support of the superintendent's budget.
Overall, the proposed FY25 budget for Greenfield Public Schools comes in at $27,755,280. That is an 8.04% decrease from the overall current FY24 budget (which is $28,786,645). However, the local portion of the proposed FY25 budget—the portion paid for by municipal appropriations rather than grant funding—is up 5.29% from the local portion of the FY24 budget.
What is going on here is that much of the pandemic-era grant funding—mainly the ESSER grants—is coming to and end and the district is having to take a bunch of stuff that has been funded out of these grants and absorb it into the local portion of the budget. This process has been happening for a while now; if the district doesn't move these items out of the grant-funding bucket, they will face a major shortfall when the grants come to an end. DeBarge reviewed of list of 10-12 significant line items in this category, everything from an Elementary Library Media Specialist, to IT equipment and support, to field trip transportation costs. It's a lot.
According to DeBarge, she compiled this budget from the requests made by each of the school principals and the department heads, as well as guidance from the School Committee and feedback from the community. The budget includes funding for an Assistant Special Education Director, an Elementary Instrumental Music Teacher, English Learner Teacher, a Float Custodian, IT staff, and a HR/School Committee support position. She described the budget as being aligned with the district's strategic plan.
During the detailed review of all the line items in the proposed budget, much of the conversation was about specific numbers that looked to be going up or down. Per DeBarge and Paquette, much of this oscillation is either contractually obligated salary adjustment or movement of costs from one line item to another within the budget. There was a sidebar during the discussion about the unnecessary complexity of Greenfield's budget and a longer-term effort to consolidate it into a more practical structure that aligns with the MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's (DESE) reporting requirements.
The superintendent also presented some fairly encouraging data showing significant improvements in both the district's chronic absentee rate as well as the RIT scores that measure student performance in Math and English Language Arts (ELA). She noted that while the district is still not happy with where these number are, the improvements are worth celebrating.
From here, the budget goes to the mayor's office to be integrated into the city's comprehensive FY25 budget. As I noted above, Mayor DeSorgher (who, per the city charter, is a member of the School Committee) abstained from the vote at this meeting. She explained that since she would be considering the overall city budget, she felt she should not vote on this budget. She also hinted that she is anticipating a potentially significant bump in the city's health insurance rates; given that comment and the detailed questions she was asking about specific amounts of money left in the district's revolving funds, I would anticipate another tight and possibly contentious budget season this spring.
Empty storefronts and the "Downtown is dead!" narrative
I may be wrong, but I kind of think that when it comes to general negative sentiments about empty, abandoned storefronts on Main Street, there are two that are punching above their weight. The first is the old Country Jewelers:
The other is the former Greenfield Games location:
(Okay, and maybe the two weird facade spaces over the train tracks next to Bonnie B's…)
Otherwise, most of the storefronts on Main Street are pretty well occupied. The obvious exception is the Wilson's block but that project is moving along and I don't feel like it should count toward the "Downtown is a ghost town!" narrative.
But for the two storefronts pictured above, they are right next to one another and they occupy a pretty prominent spot right in the middle of the central business district. They are surrounded by pretty active shops and businesses. Nonetheless, both have been sitting unoccupied for at least five years (or maybe longer) and have been falling into an increasing state of disrepair, accumulating graffiti, garbage, and broken windows. They are an eyesore, they occupy on outsized place in our town's collective imagination, and they fit into the conventional wisdom that downtown sucks.
In discussions about Greenfield's downtown, I ofter hear frustrated residents declaring that "the city should do something." I kind of agree, but the question is what. A few years ago, I was talking to someone who was on the City Council at the time; they were kicking around the idea of a vacancy tax, a means of incentivizing downtown landlords not to leave properties unoccupied. It never went anywhere and the person is, sadly for us (less so for them, I imagine), no longer on the council. I'm not even sure such a proposal would pass legal muster.
I tend to think a big part of the problem is out-of-town landlords. I think it's a lot easier to let a building sit empty for tax reasons if you don't have to see it—and its effect on the community—every day. More broadly, I think the city has limited levers it can pull about this kind of stuff. Still, I guess I would like to hear more from local officials about how to address these properties incrementally.
Looking at the city meeting calendar - Week of March 4, 2024
With the turn of the month, the city meeting calendar is getting busy again. This coming week has a bunch of meetings happening. Here are a few that I will be trying to keep an eye on…
Monday - Community Development Block Grant Public Hearing
This one is on Monday, March 4 at 5:00 PM at city hall and on Zoom. It’s a public hearing to take public comment on the items included in Greenfield's 2024 Mini-Entitlement Program application:
- Housing Rehabilitation Program ($200,000)
- Microenterprise Assistance Program ($112,500)
- Water Mains Replacement Design and Engineering ($150,000)
- Public Social Services funding for the Center for Human Development, Center for New Americans, Community Legal Aid, Stone Soup Café, and the Wildflower Alliance ($185,000 total)
Also providing updates on previous years' CDBG activities.
Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) are federally funded grants given out to Massachusetts cities and town to “meet a broad range of community development needs in housing, infrastructure, revitalization, economic development and public social services.”
Tuesday - City Council Committee Chairs
Tuesday, March 5 at 6:00 PM, also happening at city hall and on Zoom.
This the meeting where the president of the City Council and all the chairs of the committees decide the committee meeting agendas for the month ahead.
The list for this one is pretty long, so I’d suggest looking at the meeting notice for the details.
Wednesday - Planning Board
The Greenfield Planning Board will be meeting on at 6:00 PM on Wednesday, March 6 at city hall and on Zoom
On the agenda for this one:
- Public hearing on several proposed zoning amendments:
- amend the definitions of "Farm, Poultry" and "Dwelling, Three-Family"
- amend Section 200-55, Marijuana Establishments; to amend Section 200-34, Sign regulations
- amend Section 200-21, Water Supply Protection District (WP)
- amend Section 200-50B1), Major Development Review; of the Zoning Ordinance.
- A site plan review for the Starbucks going into the current Friendly's location across from Big Y off the traffic circle
- Planning Board discussion and deliberation on the proposed zoning amendments listed above
Given the recent (and ongoing) fooferah about the Aldi's already being planed to go in across from Big Y, I could imagine the discussion around this new Starbucks to be somewhat contentious.
I'm hoping to be able to attend or watch at least some of each of these meetings; if so, I'll be posting about that them live at greenfield.social and you can follow along there. If I'm not able to watch any or all of the meetings live, I'll catch them when they hit GCTV's YouTube feed and watch them there.
Either way, expect a summary post for each of these meetings on this site within a few days after the meeting takes place.
There are a couple other meetings happening this week that I'm not going to be able to cover, as I'm just one guy. 😁
As an aside, I do appreciate the city is conducting all of these meetings in a hybrid format and providing Zoom links for each one. That really makes my job a lot easier and (more importantly) I think it is much better for public accessibility as well.