MONTAGUE — New school staff positions for pandemic-related needs are the major increases in a $24.1 million budget proposal that is set to be presented at the Gill-Montague Regional School District’s budget hearing next week.
After the budget hearing, which is scheduled for Tuesday at 6:30 p.m., the School Committee may continue to modify the budget before a final vote on March 9, at which time the committee will send the budget proposal to the district’s member towns.
Next week’s budget hearing will be held virtually. The agenda for the meeting will be posted on the district’s website, gmrsd.org.
School administrators expect to fund the new positions using a grant program from the federal CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security) that targets public schools, according to Gill-Montague Business Director Joanne Blier.
A grant worth $866,000 has already been approved for the Gill-Montague school district, Blier said. That will be more than enough to cover the $230,000 in new positions the school is aiming to add, and the $224,000 in new obligations related to retirement plans and insurance policies.
The new positions include an adjustment counselor, a speech pathologist, new teaching assistants and extra custodial staff.
The new positions address needs related to the pandemic, making them eligible for grant funding, Blier said.
However, using grant funding to cover the new costs had not necessarily been the original plan. As recently as last week, school administrators had been hopeful that the state would adjust its funding program this year, in light of the pandemic’s effects on public schools.
The issue is, a district’s enrollment figures have a strong influence on how much money the district receives in state aid — and enrollment is significantly down this year, not only in the Gill-Montague district, but in most public schools in Massachusetts, administrators have said.
In Gill-Montague’s case, the district’s enrollment dropped from 1,072 in the 2019 to 2020 school year, to 974 in the 2020 to 2021 school year.
This is largely caused by families opting to home-school their children, rather than enroll in the public schools, according to Gill-Montague’s Pupil Services Director Dianne Ellis. Normally, she said, the number of families in the district that opt to home-school is in the low 40s; this year, it is over 80.
This led to an expectation that the state might indeed modify its funding program this year, with the understanding that schools’ low enrollment numbers are an effect of the pandemic and probably do not represent a trend of declining enrollment. Gill-Montague Superintendent Brian Beck had said that professional educators’ associations had lobbied for such a change, and that the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) had also endorsed it.
However, the state budget recommendation submitted last week by Gov. Charlie Baker did not give extra funding to schools. The Legislature may still decide to give extra funding, Blier said; but the governor’s budget is normally understood to be a good indication of what to expect.
If the state’s funding program is not changed, it would leave a funding gap of about $400,000 in Gill-Montague’s current budget proposal, before the $866,000 grant.
The net result should be that the school can proceed as expected with the new positions, Blier said.
“Our plan is still to add those positions, just using a different funding source,” Blier said. “I’m hoping we’re going to be able to do without any staffing reductions.”
Either way, that grant is valid through September of 2023, she said. So the district will likely continue to draw on it into 2022 and 2023.
Reach Max Marcus at mmarcus@recorder.com or 413-930-4231.