AMHERST — Responding to appeals from parents and educators concerned with staff positions proposed to be cut at the town’s three elementary schools, the Amherst School Committee voted last week to recommend a $26.02 million budget that advises the administration to preserve full-time paraeducators at each of the three school’s libraries.
Although proposed budget would still necessitate eliminating two classroom teacher positions and seven paraeducator slots across the district, while saving two classroom teachers and three paraeducators from termination, the committee “strongly” urged Superintendent Michael Morris and Finance Director Douglas Slaughter to “keep the three full-time library paraeducator positions.”
The specific support for the library paraeducators, approved by a 3-2 vote on Tuesday, was suggested by committee member Jennifer Shiao.
Shiao said ensuring current employees have jobs come next fall is important now, rather than trying to restore them later if financial projections improve.
“That doesn’t help the real people in positions who get cut. It doesn’t help them if we cut the positions and then restore them,” Shiao said.
Her appeal was supported by committee members Irv Rhodes and Ben Herrington.
Committee Chairwoman Allison McDonald and member Peter Demling both said they support keeping staff intact, but didn’t want to prioritize the library personnel and tie the hands of Morris and Slaughter.
“I feel like paraeducators support is a dynamic resource that needs to be strategically applied where it is needed the most,” Demling said.
Morris said he couldn’t promise to keep the library paraeducators. “I think tentatively we would look to do that,” Morris said.
But with fewer paraeducators in the three buildings — Wildwood, Crocker Farm and Fort River — he said he might need more flexibility for their use, especially when some are required legally to work with certain students.
The budget itself also goes $84,000 beyond the 3% increase guideline set by the Town Council, with this year’s $25.18 million budget projected to rise by $839,344, or 3.3%. That is still short of the $26.7 million needed to provide the same level of services as last year.
“This is a really, really difficult budget, and some really challenging and painful decisions that are in front of us,” McDonald said.
Still, Demling said it is appropriate to ask for the extra $84,000 in addition to $125,899 added through the Town Council’s allowable increase rising from 2.5% to 3%.
McDonald said Town Manager Paul Bockelman can accept the recommendation or write his own budget for the school. A similar process played out last year when a request for an additional $53,000 for art and technology teachers was rejected by Bockelman and then the Town Council.
“The School Committee has the authority to pass a budget that it deems fit for the needs of our district and our schools; that can get folded into the town budget or not,” McDonald said.
Morris advised the committee that the following year could be even tougher. “I’m going to say it publicly right now, we’re going to have a really significant deficit in FY 2025,” Morris said.
Rhodes said he understands the town is under stress financially. “There are a lot of people in this town who think that there’s an endless supply of money that is available to fund everything, and that is just not so,” Rhodes said.
Still, Rhodes said he is bothered that there has been an increase in high-needs students and Black, Indigenous and people of color students entering the public schools, yet the budget is going down, a disturbing pattern that usually plays out elsewhere.
“This shouldn’t happen here,” Rhodes said. “We have opened the doors in Amherst (through) a relationship to affordable housing and low-income residents who have kids — those kids go to our schools.”