AMHERST — A significant deficit anticipated in the fiscal year 2026 budget for the Amherst-Pelham Regional Schools, amid continued enrollment declines in grades 7-12, is prompting Superintendent E. Xiomara Herman to propose consolidating all secondary students into the high school building for the 2025-2026 school year.

Several days after warning the Regional School Committee that 35 middle and high school staffers could be let go in the face of an anticipated funding deficit, Herman pitched the idea of merging the six grades into the 21 Mattoon St. building during Saturday morning’s four-towns meeting held at the middle school library.

Based on the latest budget estimates, with $38.48 million in projected spending to maintain current services, the regional district could be facing a $2.2 million to $3.3 million deficit next year, Herman said. That budget is $2.71 million, or 7.6%, over the current year’s $35.77 million budget.

“When faced with a situation, I look at all facts and data,” Herman said, explaining her reasoning for the possible consolidation to officials from Amherst, Pelham, Shutesbury and Leverett. Herman said while some positions would still need to be cut, it would be preferable to maintaining the status quo and cutting 10% of the schools’ workforce.

Herman said these “early stages of conversations” are about how to continue providing students with at least basic educational requirements.

The idea of merging the schools has been broached previously, including at a four-towns meetings in February 2023, where the Pelham Finance Committee’s chairman suggested that approach due to the growing capital needs at the middle school, opened as a junior high in 1969. In addition, Amherst officials suggested revisiting and updating a 2019 study of having a single campus for regional students.

At that time, though, then-superintendent Michael Morris said the 2019 study showed that the high school, even after its mid-1990s renovation and expansion, is out of date and would need $3 million to $4 million to upgrade the sprinklers and fire system.

Herman said the consolidation is needed because the budgets in recent years have applied temporary federal Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief money as a stopgap measures. “To me, a Band-Aid was placed on a problem,” Herman said.

In responding to the “severe deficit,” her idea would allow for streamlining, including cuts in the central office and reduction of professional staff, clerical staff and maintenance workers, with $2.73 million saved from cutting 25 positions and other efficiencies. Under a best-case scenario, the district would have a $178,457 budget surplus.

Budget scenarios

With $38.48 million needed to run the regional schools, Herman also presented budget plans starting with scenario one, a 6% higher base budget for fiscal year 2025 — the $35.77 million approved by all four towns in their assessments — coupled with a 4% increase in assessments. Amherst and Pelham officials have asked to increase funding from a smaller base, with Amherst officials stating that $355,440 of its assessment was a “gift” using American Rescue Plan Act money.

The presentation progressively showed five other scenarios, each more challenging, including a 6% base with conventional 2.5% assessment increase for each town, a 4% base with a 4% assessment increase, a 4% base with a 3% assessment increase, a 4% base with a 2.5% assessment increase, and a 2.5% base with 2.5% assessment increase.

Under the most rosy funding scenario, a 6% base with 4% increase in assessments for each of the four member towns, would yield a $178,457 surplus. But other scenarios would continue deficits, from $169,416 to $954,320, though much smaller than by keeping the schools intact.

Enrollment down

Herman is confident that enrollment projections demonstrate the merger can happen, with 1,172 students from Amherst, Shutesbury, Leverett and Pelham expected in the regional schools, down 3% from the 1,210 enrollment as of Oct. 1, 2023. That enrollment from a year ago itself represented an 18% decline from the 1,478 student enrollment on Oct. 1, 2013, which was down 27.6% from the Oct. 1, 2003 enrollment numbers, when 2,041 students were in the six grades.

When the four towns approved the $23.1 million, 125,000-square-foot addition to the high school in 1994, more than doubling the size of the 120,000-square-foot school originally opened in 1956, it was sufficient to meet enrollment of 1,450 for grades 9-12. At the time the expanded high school opened in fall 1997, the middle school enrollment declined from 1,000 to 700.

A more concrete preliminary budget will be ready by late November or early December, Herman said. She would eventually like to get to performance-based budgeting, where financial decisions are made based on how well students are doing, part of her effort to put students first, while also addressing a budget crisis.

“We need to be using a performance-based budgeting model,” Herman said.

As a transitional year, Herman will be shifting to line-item budgeting from the current level-services budgeting, which Herman said maintains the status quo and doesn’t address inefficiencies or changing student needs.

Another idea for cutting costs, which would have to be negotiated, would be furloughing staff for one day a week. “The reality is cuts will have to be made,” Herman said.

Herman doesn’t yet have a plan for what might happen to the 197,000-square-foot middle school, originally opened as a junior high school with grades 7-9 and which has been eyed for the 6th Grade Academy, no later than the fall of 2026, when the new K-5 elementary school opens at the site of Fort River School.

Herman said the district has to make more efforts to retain students, suggesting finding funding for innovation technology and other new programs that could appeal to career-oriented students.

The middle school, though, has deferred maintenance needs, including a new roof.

No reaction at meeting

While representatives from each community had breakout sessions, they didn’t react to Herman’s specifics, though Amherst resident Vincent O’Connor told Amherst officials that there will be pushback from the community on the idea of having seventh and eighth graders in the same building as older students.

What feedback there was came in the budget numbers, with the smaller towns rejecting an argument that Amherst has made that its use of ARPA for an assessment shouldn’t be counted toward the base budget.

“We really think the base is the base,” said George Arvanitis, a member of the Shutesbury Finance Committee.

Similarly, Philip Carter, a member of the Leverett Finance Committee, said that the town prefers the budget scenarios built from the 6% increase base, which would lead to smaller deficits.

Amherst At Large Councilor Mandi Jo Hanneke, though, said that if Amherst is forced into higher assessments for the region, that would compromise municipal services or even the town’s support for elementary schools.

“The money just is not there,” Hanneke said.

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.