The main causes of these over expenditures have been inadequate funding for district employees’ health and life insurance, inadequate assistance from the state for transportation costs and declining enrollment due to the closing of Vermont Yankee.
Declining enrollment from school choice has VERY little to do with VY. What it does have to do with is incompetence. These parents have watched closely since 2015 what has been happening at PVRS, administrators leaving, loss of valuable teachers, police officer in school, loss of programs, unhealthy environment among students, and teachers due to a poorly run school by principal and Superintendent, not to mention and I make this clear an unhealthy School Committee that did nothing to stop it or help the students and teachers. PVRS has been a school choice till 2015. The SC and its choices are the reason, not VY, we have the students to send its just no longer the school of choice due to its rapid decline and like I said unhealthy environment. I would also like to add the majority of students from Vernon ( before you lost your large class in 2017) were driven to school by parents, not the bus.
As for this school lunch program, how is it possible to lose so much money? You were paid by the state for kids who received FREE lunches, and if you did not pay you did not eat and that's a fact you have left out. Seems someone hands are dipping here. Maybe the Mass Internal Rev should take a look. Oh, that's right they are! This should make every taxpayer stand and pay attention, due to the fact Mass IRS does not normally do this.
Did you also make it clear to taxpayers that even if you closed the school it still will cost them just as much if not more to undo what this SC and Millers destruction has done? No, I am sure you didn't.
Bernardston Selectboard Chairman Stanley Garland I am gonna go with the assumption you never knew what Miller did in Templeton. Ask her about the Nuclear option she pulled - Ask her about how emergency services from it were on call only- or how the Towns Sports and swimming pool were closed for the summer due to no funds- the list is endless - so if you think for a minute that mattered to her during her destruction think again- Ask her how she had removed a memorial in Templeton for children who died in accidents or sicknesses and how she made it about drugs which were not involved ever! This is what has been running your schools, oh and your SB.
If nothing else scares or worries you this should. - This audit was given to the Internal Revenue Service because they found something.
Other information on the state of the deficit was also provided at last night’s meeting by Mary Jane Handy, director of accounts at the state Department of Revenue. In 2016, the “school lunch deficit” was $210,000. In 2017, there was a shortfall of about $400,000 in various operating expenses, plus about $45,000 more in the lunch deficit, for a total of about $640,000. And for 2018, Handy said, she anticipates another $400,000 in debt — bringing the total amount of missing money to roughly $1,061,000.
Mary Jane Handy -The Bureau reviews audit reports of various Massachusetts local governments submitted by independent CPA firms.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME!
The main causes of these over expenditures have been inadequate funding.
The only issue of inadequacies is your SCHOOL COMMITTEE and RUTH MILLER.
Just curious - but when are you gonna be smart enough to follow the money? Go back to the beginning 2015 and start doing traces- pull her bank records ( IRS will ) - go thru the books ( Templeton found a lot of misplaced money when they did ) but for God's sake don't sit here and whine and play the blame game when it doesn't have the answers you seek. For once do your damn jobs.
We are watching you.
NORTHFIELD — With budget cuts looming over the Pioneer Valley Regional School District, residents are becoming more vocal about how the district should begin to address its financial problem.
According to a list of possible cuts prepared by district administrators, the district would save $300,000 by closing Leyden’s Pearl Rhodes Elementary School, and $400,000 by closing Warwick Community School.
Abbi Pratt of Leyden read a letter at Thursday’s school committee meeting, which she said was signed by most parents of Pearl Rhodes students, saying that closing Pearl Rhodes “would cause lasting damage to our town and the school district as a whole.”
Instead of closing the school, the letter said, the School Committee should investigate a tax increase to the four member towns.
Deborah Potee of Northfield similarly advocated asking the towns for more money, whether it would come from reserves or tax increases.
“I know the schools are important,” said Bernardston Selectboard Chairman Stanley Garland, “but there are other things that are important, too, and we’ve got to be able to afford them. I think that the closing of a school is something that we really need to look at.”
Bernardston’s tax rates are already the third highest in Franklin County, Garland added.
Of the two schools that could be closed, Leyden’s Pearl Rhodes would be the more likely candidate, said School Committee member Peggy Kaeppel, who is a resident of Leyden.
“We’re just being shortsighted if we don’t think we need to investigate closing at least Pearl Rhodes Elementary School as soon as it can be done,” Kaeppel said. “It’s unrealistic to even think about cutting music or the arts. … That school, it’s time for it to be mothballed, at least for now.”
Yet closing a school is a complicated process, said Fernard Dupere of Dupere Law Offices, the School Committee’s legal counsel.
The process is especially complicated, given that the district agreement guarantees that each town has its own elementary school. But, Dupere said, other districts in similar situations have done it, with varying results.
“The degree of the complication depends on the willingness of all involved to reach a common result,” he said.
“From my standpoint, I don’t believe that’s an appropriate discussion to be having for this coming school year,” said Jeff Wulfson, Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. “That’s a major decision for a community and a district to make with major implication, both financial and legal. It shouldn’t be rushed.”
Other information on the state of the deficit was also provided at last night’s meeting by Mary Jane Handy, director of accounts at the state Department of Revenue. In 2016, the “school lunch deficit” was $210,000. In 2017, there was a shortfall of about $400,000 in various operating expenses, plus about $45,000 more in the lunch deficit, for a total of about $640,000. And for 2018, Handy said, she anticipates another $400,000 in debt — bringing the total amount of missing money to roughly $1,061,000.
The main causes of these over expenditures have been inadequate funding for district employees’ health and life insurance, inadequate assistance from the state for transportation costs and declining enrollment due to the closing of Vermont Yankee.
Wulfson emphasized that the district would need to be proactive in making adjustments to its budget and that the process would take more than one fiscal year.
“We do not suggest that you wait for us to come in with some magic answer that we do not have,” he said.
