Dear Worthington Community members,
Friday Conwell students left for February break with boxes of pizza from the PTO’s recent very successful fundraiser, and they’ll return to school on 2/28 with the mask mandate finally lifted.
But to us, winter mostly means budgeting season. As the committee that oversees the budget for the school, the largest proportion of annual town spending, we want to keep you all informed about our activities.
We welcome community members with any questions about this year’s budget or our budget process to attend our meetings on 3/10, 3/24 and the budget hearing on 4/7. It’s important to us that voters have a thorough understanding of our District’s spending. We have already had several school committee meetings in which we have reviewed the Superintendent’s projections for next year’s educational costs. We are pleased that these initial projections show a very small increase (almost level) in the portion of our budget request that is for education at RH Conwell Elementary.
We do anticipate an increase in our costs for our secondary students at Hampshire Regional. Part of this is due to a larger cohort of Worthington students attending Hampshire Regional next year, and part is due to the annual increases built into our new tuition agreement we negotiated with the regional district last year. FY ’23 will be year 2 of 3 years of a 10% annual increase in tuition to “catch up” after 7 years with no tuition increase. After these 3 years, our current agreement reverts to a sustainable 5% annual increase for years 4 and 5, and the agreement directs that future tuition agreements will increase Worthington’s tuition at a percentage rate that tracks with Hampshire Regional’s average increase in per-pupil costs (historically about 4%).
We are also budgeting for a large increase in our out-of-district special education expenses. FY ’23 is the last year Worthington will be responsible for covering these particular legally obligated services. This is not a line item the school committee or superintendent can adjust — which is why we started a practice last year of setting aside 1/3 of each year’s school choice income as a reserve fund to offset unexpected special education costs such as this. That helped us in this FY ’22 to cover these unanticipated out-of-district costs that arose after the town passed our FY22 budget. We will continue to set aside school choice funds in reserve to help insulate taxpayers somewhat from the inevitable ups and downs in special education costs.
In other school committee news, we are pleased to be working with the Superintendent, the school nurse, and the Board of Health to oversee a careful shift toward masking becoming optional at Conwell starting 2/28. In our 3/10 meeting we will review proposed revisions to our policies regarding masking in order to support all students and families.
We are continuing the process we started this fall of reviewing our District Policy Manual for necessary revisions and updates. The Policy Subcommittee reviews policy guidance from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees and presents proposed revisions to the larger committee for discussion.
In March, we will begin our work of completing the school committee’s biannual evaluation of our Superintendent based on the District and Superintendent Goals established last fall. And this summer the Committee will hold a planning meeting to consider new short- and long-term goals for the District for the coming years. We welcome community input regarding what you think those goals should be. Our next School Committee Listening Session will be a good opportunity to share your thoughts on this. We’ll announce this date after our March meeting.
We thank the Worthington community for your continued support of the school committee and the Conwell staff members; and we appreciate the excellent education the staff provide our Worthington students.
With gratitude,
On behalf of the Worthington School Committee
wosc@scm.hr-k12.org
Alison Todd, Chair
atodd@scm.hr-k12.org