Letter: Correcting Councilor Ryan on the Regional School Budget

This weekend, Amherst District 3 Councilor and newly elected Council Vice President George Ryan sent an update on the Regional Schools budget to constituents on his mailing list. The full text of his statement is included below.  

Unfortunately, Councilor Ryan’s update contains a number of inaccuracies, as well as statements that demonstrate a lack of understanding of the challenges facing our regional schools. 

It is crucial that we do not circulate incorrect information that creates division in our community. To that end, we hope the following clarifications will illuminate realities that were misrepresented in Councilor Ryan’s update. 

Claim #1: Ryan states that the Town Council “doesn’t understand” why spending for the regional schools is increasing faster than the town’s revenue, “especially given the significant long-term reduction in the number of students we teach”.

Fact: There is no mystery as to why education costs are rising.

The financial pressures on our schools and those across Massachusetts are well-documented. These challenges are frequently discussed by elected state officials, at public town and School Committee meetings, and in the media. The reason spending for the regional schools is increasing faster than the town’s revenue is quite clear: charter schools, an increase in higher needs students, and of course inflation. In fact, over the last several months, the Amherst Town Council has taken two telling actions relevant to these challenges. It passed a resolution enumerating the ways in which the state funding formula for charter schools “siphons money away from” and is “undermining the stability of” our public schools. It also sent a letter to the Massachusetts Secretary of Education urging the state to reevaluate years-old funding formulas and fund the “real costs” of our schools. These actions reflect a clear understanding on the part of town Councilors about the disparity between the schools’ budgetary needs and the funds allocated for their use. 

Our school district’s expenses are subject to many of the same inflationary pressures impacting other sectors of the economy and the Town of Amherst. Our regional cchools face additional stress because they must cover rising retiree benefit costs within their operating budgets whereas the town subsidizes their own retiree costs in addition to their operating budget. This annual cost alone exceeds the current deficit the regional schools are facing.

Additionally, even as our district’s overall student population has declined, the percentage of students with higher needs, (English language learners, students with disabilities, low-income students) has increased, resulting in a student population that is, on average, more expensive to educate than it has been in the past. 

The chronic lack of sufficient funding has forced reductions in staff that are outpacing the decline in student enrollment. The real cost of educating our children may be inconvenient but it is neither surprising nor mysterious. 

Claim #2:  “The School Committee’s position has been that public safety, public works, and other municipal services should be reduced to allow the Regional assessment to grow disproportionately”

Fact: This narrative has been repeated numerous times using the language of “pitting schools against potholes.” We have found no evidence of any statement the School Committee has made about decreasing the budgets of sectors or municipal services to address school needs.

Indeed, advocates for school funding (parents and caregivers but also others in town who recognize the broad importance of maintaining excellence in our public education) have voiced concerns about resource allocation at public meetings. These citizens have argued that surplus generation (multiple millions of dollars of tax money left over at the end of the year) should be reduced so that more money is put into operating budgets, to be shared among all of the departments in town. Advocates have also argued that there should be more transparency around end of the year allocation of these surpluses – so that all sectors of town could share in this revenue. 

Claim #3: The Regional School Committee has not engaged in discussions on how to bring costs down and instead has “remained fixed on short-term tweaks and unrealistic revenue rearrangements”

Fact: The best way for the Regional School Committee to be “engaged” is to be included. It is our understanding that until late last year, the Regional School Committee was excluded from having a representative on the Budget Coordinating Group (the body consisting of the municipality, the library and the schools, that is tasked with coordinating budget needs and priorities within Amherst). This year the Regional School Committee’s request to have a seat at this important table was granted.  

Representatives from the Regional School Committee routinely participate in meetings and communicate with town councilors about both the challenges and proposed solutions to our town’s budget issues. Support Our Schools Amherst members have repeatedly seen a misalignment of values between those who see value in educational excellence and those whose perspectives are dominated by frustration at rising costs. These types of divides have led to unproductive conversations and community members who feel unheard and undervalued. 

Massachusetts General Law tasks the Superintendent and not the School Committee with making detailed budget decisions. The School Committee gives guidance to the Superintendent, who, with the School Finance Director and the input of building leadership, drafts the detailed budget. Our new Superintendent is engaged in this work currently, as well as in an exhaustive review of the district’s finances. She and her team are working diligently to reduce the projected deficit, but she is hampered by many fixed costs outside of her control. This work for our district, on the part of the superintendent, is long overdue and should be acknowledged, celebrated, and encouraged. 

Claim #4: Councilor Ryan insinuates that the Regional School Committee is somehow responsible for an unfair assessment of Amherst’s portion of the regional school budget. 

Fact: The Regional School Committee does not decide what portion of the district budget is paid by the Town of Amherst. The Regional School budget assessment is detailed in the 1953 Regional School Agreement Document and subsequent amendments, as agreed upon by the towns of Amherst, Pelham, Leverett and Shutesbury.  Deviation from the assessment method in this document in any particular year must be approved by three of the four towns through votes by the Amherst Town Council and the Pelham, Leverett, and Shutesbury Annual Town meetings.

Thank you for reading. We hope that the points we have made in this statement will allow people to better understand that there are legitimate reasons for our rising educational costs and that the regional schools are subject to pressures not applied to other sectors of town. Parents of children in our school system and members of our school committees are asking that town leadership work collaboratively with us toward our shared goal of high-quality public education. 

Cathleen Mitchell on behalf of Support Our Schools Amherst 

About Support Our Schools (SOS) Amherst
SOS Amherst is a group of residents (85 members and growing) helping each other understand issues and get involved in adequately funding our public schools. We aim to increase community knowledge of public school and municipal budgeting, as well as state funding for public schools, with the goal of ensuring more equitable funding for our children. Learn more at www.arpsparents.com.

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Text of George Ryan’s Comments Regarding the Regional Schools Budget
Council Updates:  I have covered most of the Council highlights in my introductory message.  Here I want to touch on two other topics:  the 2025 Town Manager Goals and the challenge of our school budgets.  Let me start with the FY26 school budgets.  To date the attention has been exclusively on the Regional School budget.  We are still awaiting the Elementary School budget proposal.  The Regional School budget is complicated by the fact that there are four towns involved and the assessment method for determining what each Town will pay (and hence what the budgetary impact will be) is complex. What is clear is that Amherst pays roughly 80% of the total cost of the Regional Schools and that the current assessment method is actually to Amherst’s disadvantage.  

But the critical issue with the Regional budget is that spending is growing faster than the town’s revenues.  We are still trying to understand why that is especially given the significant long-term reduction in the number of students we teach.  But whatever the reasons, the reality we all face is that spending is outstripping revenues.  To date the School Committee’s position has been that public safety, public works and other municipal services should be reduced to allow the Regional assessment to grow disproportionately.  This would be a dramatic reversal of long-standing Town policies.  All Town services and programs are increasingly stressed by rising costs and constricted revenues.  I don’t believe the solution is to pit one part of the budget against the others.  We need a sustainable plan that respects all our priorities, and one that we develop together.

Toward that end the Council and the Finance Committee have engaged the Regional School Committee for some months in two ways:  (1) laying out the realities of the Town’s overall financial situation; and (2) asking the Regional School Committee to join us in a substantive discussion about how to bring the cost of educating our young people into alignment with our resources.  (You can learn more about that effort here.) To date that discussion has not occurred and the Regional School Committee’s focus has remained fixed on short-term tweaks and unrealistic revenue rearrangements.

I believe we owe it to our students — current and future — as well as our valued teachers and staff to tackle this challenge head-on, and I remain hopeful that the Regional School Committee will respond to our request to work together on a long-term strategy that will provide stability to our schools in a challenging financial environment.  This is a time not for division and taking sides but for coming together as a community.