WESTFIELD — During the School Committee meeting on May 5, Finance Subcommittee Chair Bo Sullivan made a motion for approval of the fiscal year 2026 budget of $75.5 million, and then said his ultimate goal was not to vote on it tonight.
“I had a phone conversation with Sen. [John] Velis this morning. The Senate is putting together a supplemental budget, and he has added $250,000 for Westfield Public Schools … the final vote for that supplemental budget is Thursday,” Sullivan said, adding that after the discussion he planned to make a motion to table the vote on the budget until May 19.
“If the Senate votes the appropriation, it becomes part of the budget — we are then guaranteed the money. I would like to see where the recommendations are to spend that money in this budget,” Sullivan said. He said tabling the vote would give Superintendent Stefan Czaporowski and Business Administrator Shannon Barry two weeks to decide where to apply the money.
School Committee member Tim O’Connor asked whether the money from the Senate is earmarked.
Sullivan said it is earmarked for capital, and would go into the account to fund capital projects. “My hope is to move the money from these capital projects into personnel, and put the state money back into capital expenditures. What I’m hoping happens is $250,000 more on the personnel side,” he said.
Committee member Michael Tirrell said he came to the meeting assuming they would vote on the budget. Without talking about specific positions, he said it is unfortunate that technology takes a back seat when funds are short. “Sometimes technology doesn’t move forward, but generally speaking, it should never move backwards,” he said.
Tirrell said if Westfield is lucky enough to get that earmark and restore some positions, he would like to take a look at technology, science and math. “I understand that every position in here — the overwhelming number — is very impactful. I feel very strongly about those technical positions.”
Tirrell said he is also concerned from the virtual school and special education standpoint about incurring more out-of-district costs in going to the hybrid classroom model; and about special education students going back to one of those placements and incurring more costs on the other side.
“We spoke at the last meeting about getting creative and mitigating some of the biggest risks in our budget. I would hate to cut things now that have a potential value if we’re able to expend for those things in the future. Those are my main thoughts. I look forward to hopefully hearing some good news later this week about this earmark,” Tirrell said.
Committee member Jeffrey Gunther said he was concerned about the sustainability issue with technology, the cut of prekindergarten seats, the special education teacher ratio, paying attention to coaching roles, particularly in special education, the loss of deans impacting behavior and hybrid worries.
“Prior to this conversation, I was ready to vote yes on this because I don’t know if I would make different decisions,” Gunther said, and thanked the central administration team for what he called “their hard tradeoffs.”
“I don’t want to lose sight as we exit budget season of the longer term, the need to get back to funding schools at where we were pre-COVID and comparable to other communities.”
O’Connor asked Czaporowski what the process would be if the district gets an influx of money.
“We would need to know which fiscal year that money is coming to,” Czaporowski said. He said a couple of years ago they received an earmark from Velis that was awarded for one year, but didn’t arrive until December. “We had to spend a chunk of money in a small period of time. I need more information. Let’s say we are going to get that money for July 1 — we can’t back-date it. We would look at what we could do. Let’s say one of those things was maintenance. If that money doesn’t come until December, we can’t not have maintenance until December. We will do that work as soon as we have the answer,” he said.
Tirrell also asked the superintendent about the preschool learning lab at Westfield High School, and applying to have it become a Chapter 74 program. “It looks like it’s a one-year process,” he said, and asked if the program has to be running to apply for Chapter 74.
Earlier in the meeting during public participation, several high school students said the laboratory preschool has shaped their future career goals, and what a loss it would be to cut the Children’s Corner program.
Czaporowski said the program has to be running in order to apply for Chapter 74, and would need additional requirements from a Capital Skills grant. “I have not been made aware of more Capital Skills [funding],” he said, which was available a few years ago when they discussed applying for Chapter 74.
McCabe said $250,000 is usually given to some kind of capital, never to prop up a position.
He said if there is a windfall of money, adding that he has been in constant contact with state Reps. Kelly Pease (R-Westfield) and Mike Finn (D-West Springfield) and state Sen. Velis (D-Westfield), and if funding comes in through Chapter 70 to increase the school side of the budget, “does that mean we decrease the city’s contribution to the school side? The real problem with the city budget is driven by $4.6 million in health care increases,” which he said are paid by employees of the city at a certain percentage of 23%, and 77% for the city’s share.
“If I didn’t have $4.6 million going against the budget, we wouldn’t be having this discussion,” McCabe said.
“I would be in favor of holding off on this discussion for one more meeting,” he added, and said he is waiting to see about Chapter 70, Chapter 74, Chapter 90 and circuit breaker funds, and what the gap will be between what they’re funding and what they’re supposed to be funding.
McCabe said tabling the vote will involve special meetings of the School Committee and the City Council. He urged everyone, including residents who attended the meeting, to continue contacting every senator they know, and not to use individual positions as their argument, but only talk about positions and programs and what impacts the cuts will have.
The School Committee then unanimously voted to table the budget vote.
