Letter: Proposal for New School Budget Committee Is Disrespectful to Incoming Superintendent

The following letter was sent to the Regional School Committee (RSC) and Interim Superintendent on May 28, 2024, asking them to reject proposals to create a new budget sustainability committee. While the RSC rejected a motion to create such a committee by a vote of 2-7, the original proposal by Town Manager Paul Bockelman and Town Council President Lynn Griesemer may still come before the Town Council next week and my objections are germane to any discussion that may take place within that body. Read the motion that was brought before the school committee here. Read the  draft memo from Town Manager Paul Bockelman and Town Council President Lynn Griesemer, and the proposed charge for that committee.

It is reasonable for the School Committee, along with the Town Manager and Town Council to seek a way to create better communication and collaboration in the construction of the school budget.  After all, this year, the School Committee saw the proposed school budget for the first time only two weeks before they were originally expected to approve it.  The current process is flawed and the previous superintendent, along with the current Interim superintendent, have done a dismal job of planning and budget management.  So it’s reasonable for us to be looking for a better way to do things.

However, the process by which the proposal for a new school budget committee is being brought forward is deeply troubling to me and insulting to the new superintendent. If adopted or even discussed tonight it will give Superintendent Herman just cause for resentment and mistrust as well as good reason to doubt that she will be supported in the work that she is about to undertake.

Why was Superintendent Herman not involved in crafting this motion?.  Why is she not at the table for deliberations about this motion?  What is the urgency of putting into place a new policy for establishing budget and program priorities that it can’t wait until she takes office and can fully participate?  The motion would seem to diminish her role in the setting of budgets and academic priorities, surely as she understood them when she accepted the job.  How can such a change be reasonably suggested and adopted in the brief interval between when she was hired and when she assumes her duties?

This is a terrible look for a town where the administration of the schools has appeared terribly chaotic for over a year and where poor management decisions abound. This looks like a deliberate end-run around the new superintendent, an effort to adopt new policy that really undercuts her authority, an effort to change the organization of two primary responsibilities of the superintendent (budget and academic priorities) without her input.  It looks like it is being rushed through before she can weigh in on the matter and participate in the deliberations. It looks racist, as if the town, which has given pretty much unfettered control in the past to a series of flawed white administrators, is now trying to restrict the prerogatives of the district’s first black superintendent.  And it shows little sensitivity to the frequent charges of unaddressed racism in the schools and in the town.

Superintendent Herman would be within her rights to reconsider taking up the position given the bad faith that is reflected in this motion.  Perhaps that is the intent.

Prudence and common courtesy require that you take no action on this motion, and indeed, engage in no deliberation on it, until the superintendent arrives in Amherst and begins work. Please wait. There is no good reason to take up this motion tonight unless your intent is to disempower our new superintendent.  I ask that you vote to table this motion until August 2024.

Also, I am not sanguine about the possibility of the Town Council and the Town Manager setting programmatic priorities for the schools. There is good reason to leave that to educational professionals and the elected members of the School Committee. We should see what our new superintendent has to say about that, long before that is brought up for deliberation. And if such a change is to be considered, it should not be without a lot of public input. Public hearings are in order before any school committee deliberations on such a change. 

Art Keene

Art Keene is a resident of District 3, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at UMass, and the Managing Editor of the Amherst Indy. His four children are graduates of Amherst Regional High School. At UMass he co-founded and co-directed two civic leadership programs, The UMass Alliance for Community Transformation (UACT) and the Community Scholars Program. He was head coach of the ARHS girls cross country team for 17 years.