You threw our school into chaos and despair and now you act stupid like what the hell happened!
Your ignorance happened, you allowing our principal and Mike Duprey and Cathy HH leaving and valuable teachers. You closed your ears to what was happening and the destruction she was creating right under your damn noses!
Astronomical raises while teachers are losing their damn jobs .. what the hell is wrong with you! As it stands you ALL need to be fired and Miller needs to see the door with the rest she brought here .
Your a damn disgrace ALL OF YOU on this committee but especially you Pat and ALL because you couldn't do your damn jobs and listen to what was being put in front of you.
You lost school choice from this BS.. and you have parents searching out other schools for their children's education because you would not listen to them and it was ALL happening in front of you and even the kids told you they no longer felt safe in their own school! Great job.
PVRS is done and I can see the state closing this school and its all on you and especially you Pat and Young.
Trust me your nightmare has only begun shes not done yet .
NORTHFIELD — Once again, Pioneer Valley Regional School Committee is left searching for places to make cuts after more concrete budget figures show the district needs another $282,514 to balance the books for the current school year.
The budget subcommittee learned about the shortfall in its approximately $14.1 million budget this week from Superintendent Ruth Miller who projected the deficit if no cuts are made.
She said the deficit resulted primarily from the district receiving $303,601 less in regional transportation reimbursement than Miller anticipated.
Having just been audited by accounting and tax firm Melanson Heath for FY16, which yielded equally troubling figures, subcommittee member David Young explained auditors Tanya Campbell and Patrice Squillante recommended revisiting the current budget “to make sure we haven’t launched into FY18 with a structural deficit.”
“We’re not going to make it to the end of the year, going by the auditors,” subcommittee member Jeanne Milton added.
Miller said Campbell and Squillante will attend Thursday’s School Committee meeting to explain their findings. Neither could be reached Friday afternoon.
The auditors’ suggestions include hiring an outside firm to catch up on the treasurer’s work as “the bank accounts have not been reconciled for many months” and hiring a temporary business manager. Currently, Miller acts as both superintendent and district business manager.
Additionally, in both FY15 and FY16 audits, the auditors have been unable to locate a comprehensive budget document. Subcommittee member Peggy Kaeppel said Squillante recommended getting a template for such a document from the Massachusetts Association of School Business Officials.
Concern expressed The figures elicited great concern from those attending the meeting.
“I’m very concerned every meeting I come to,” said Leyden Finance Committee Chairwoman Michele Giarusso, who is also chairwoman of the regional HEART Committee, a Pioneer support group. “It’s just negative, negative, negative, and we keep getting deeper and deeper into trouble.”
“You have come into the year with less than zero, and that’s why we’re having problems,” Bernardston Selectman Robert Raymond told the subcommittee. “And nobody knows what the figure is. I as a town official have no faith in this … We haven’t been able to compare anything in the past few years.”
Richard Fontaine, another member of the HEART Committee and former School Committee member, said the budget isn’t presented with transparency.
“We’ve got some very high price people and they’re not making correct decisions,” Fontaine exclaimed.
Given significant cuts to staffing at Pioneer, John Rodgers thought the cuts should have saved the district hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“Where did it all go?” he asked.
Bernardston Finance Committee Chairwoman Jane Dutcher also pointed to the rising school lunch deficit, which subcommittee members estimated to be around $250,000.
Future cuts The subcommittee began brainstorming ways to cut $282,514 out of the current budget. Paying Bernardston Elementary School Principal Bob Clancy $10,000 to also serve as Pearl Rhodes Elementary School principal, instead of the $52,800 the district had paid former Pearl Rhodes Principal Deanna Leblanc, saves $42,800.
As School Resource Officer Igor Komerzan recently resigned, some committee members proposed not refilling the position, which would save the district about $28,000.
Other suggestions included cutting Pioneer Assistant Principal Jennifer Albert Perry or Assistant Superintendent Gail Healy, eliminating one or two additional buses, cutting four classroom instructional assistants at the elementary school level, using a payroll service instead of a clerk, and decreasing the sports budget.
“We have protected sports for my entire affiliation with the school district, which is 30 years,” said Cathy Hawkins-Harrison, whose dean of students position was cut from the current year’s budget. “But there’s a part of me that says if we touched sports, we’d have to have this meeting in the auditorium, because parents would be up in arms!”
Sharon Fontaine recalled serious cuts to the sports budget in the late 1980s.
“It was heart wrenching,” she said. “But we kept the school going.”
No cuts or budgeting solutions were voted on during the meeting. The budget subcommittee plans to meet Wednesday at 7 p.m. at Pioneer, where it is expected to vote on recommendations for cuts to bring to the full School Committee during Thursday’s meeting, also at 7 p.m. at Pioneer.
