NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The School Committee was presented the timeline for the fiscal 2026 budget on Tuesday. 

 

"The cabinet and members of the district leadership team have been very, very busy with starting to kind of proactively prepare for FY 26 budget cycle," said Superintendent Barbara Malkas. "We're still in the area of some unknowns, not having yet received the governor's budget or, you know, an understanding of where Chapter 70 [state education aid] may land."

 

Gov. Maura Healey is set to release her budget proposal on Jan. 22; the administration will meet with principals and department heads in February to develop a draft spending plan. 

 

A public hearing and final approval will be in May or June. 

 

"We've been working on it for the last couple of months, and the starting point is really looking at where we are in FY 25, look at our current staffing and making adjustments based on the current status," said Director of Finance and Administration Nancy Rauscher. "One of the key dates that we're looking forward to is Jan. 22 which is when we expect the governor to submit her budget. And that will really help inform us from a funding standpoint, in terms of what our Chapter 70 will look like."

 

She said they were looking not only at the operating budget, but other funding sources, including school choice and circuit breaker funds, with a goal of establishing a best practice of rolling over circuit breaker revenue to better support out-of-district tuition. 

 

A third funding source is grants and Carrie Burnett, grants, special projects and procurement officer, gave a presentation on grant funding for fiscal 2025.

 

The district received $3.77 million in grant funding so far this year, the bulk of which were federal and state funding. This is down from $6.4 million in fiscal 2024 although some grants are still pending. 

 

The decrease this year is in large part because of the loss of some $2.2 million from the expired federal Elementary Secondary School Emergency Relief Program, or ESSER.

 

Malkas pointed out that the school district doesn't have a dedicated grants writer and that "there are many, many grants in this district, and they're handled by different people." 

 

Burnett's coordination is critical to keeping track of deadlines and reporting requirements, she said.

 

Burnett explained that grants are for targeted initiatives and programs to "ensure all students are receiving high quality and excellent education." 

 

She went over some of the grant programs and writers and the GEMS, or grant education management systems that vary between federal, state and private programs.

 

"Most of the entitlement grants, the federal grants, will be multi-year grants, meaning that we're awarded a specific amount in one year, and if you don't spend it all down in that year, we can extend it through the next fiscal year so we don't lose it," Burnett said. "Most of the state grants will have an end date of that same fiscal year, which would be in June."

 

Some grant funds are entitlements and others are competitive. She described the district as "crushing it" in competitive grants with more than $770,000 to date.

 

"Since I pulled this data together for this presentation, the competitive grants have already increased by $35,000," she said.

 

Malkas said the Massachusetts Association of School Committees had brought to their attention that the School Committee has the authority to approve grants. This presentation was provided to show people where the grants are coming from and where they are being used.

 

Mayor Jennifer Macksey, chair of the School Committee, said the grants would be reviewed quarterly from now on and asked for more details on where they are being spent.

 

In other business, the district has hired two permanent substitutes since raising rates for the positions last month. The substitute pool had gotten so low that administrators were filling in. 

 

Malkas said some former Drury students also applied as subs while home over winter break "so that will be very helpful to us for when they finish up in May, early May, and we still have six more weeks of school to get through." The district is also reaching out to Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts to see if their students would be available one or two days a week. 

 

"So we are doing better with having availability of substitutes," she said. "It's not it's not perfect, but it is an improvement."