Town Administrator Lisa Wong discusses the FY26 budget and its next steps during a Selectboard meeting.
Photo credit: South Hadley Community Television
SOUTH HADLEY — Throughout the past couple months, the South Hadley community has expressed their displeasure with the fiscal year 2026 budget that is set to include minimal increases and plenty of cuts.
The Selectboard recently approved the town budget, and the School Committee recently approved the school budget.
Town Administrator Lisa Wong and Superintendent Mark McLaughlin expressed steps that are being taken to attempt to change the funding formulas.
On March 18, the final proposed FY26 budget was approximately $58 million, a 2.95% increase from the FY25 budget.
After going through each department, Wong said that the budget will feature a loss of more than 27 positions with around 20 coming from the School Department.
Due to increased health insurance and transportation costs, the district had to do a deeper analysis of its spending. The school leadership team conducted an analysis of its revenue and impacts and learned that the FY26 expenses plus the FY26 revenue equaled an operating deficit of approximately $2.1 million to achieve a level services budget.
After learning of the deficit and eventual cuts, the school administration met with South Hadley High School Student Council and SHEA President Amy Foley to begin a letter writing campaign for the administration to gather letters from students to provide to state Rep. Homar Gomez (D-Easthampton) and state Sen. Jake Oliveira (D-Ludlow).
The South Hadley High School Student Council Letter Writing campaign produced over 900 letters from students, staff and supporters.
The letters highlighted the importance of education and the need for more financial support.
The letters were given to the state delegation and legislators as part of the state Ways and Means public hearing process.
Town administrators and superintendents were scheduled to testify at the House Ways and Means Committee on March 24 on the direct and harmful impact to the students of the state’s outdated funding formulas.
School Committee Chair Eric Friesner, Assistant Superintendent Jennifer Voyik and McLaughlin also met with Gomez and Oliveira on March 31.
The town is also organizing a contingency to attend and testify at the April 8 hearing at the State House.
Besides the letter writing campaign, South Hadley helped organize a regional roundtable with area town, school and finance leadership to share ideas and support each other.
The group also issued a statement to the state Ways and Means Committee.
Part of the statement read, “It is critical to recognize the fiscal challenges school districts throughout the commonwealth are encountering, as well as the opportunity to strengthen and reimagine public education by building on the historic victories of the Student Opportunity Act and the Fair Share Amendment. The challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic persist, with an increasing number of students requiring social and emotional support.”
Finally, the Selectboard and School Committee supported the establishment of a town-wide budget task force to address funding shortfalls.
The reason for the creation of the task force because the funding and policy landscape have fundamentally altered the town’s ability to provide quality services, according to its proposal.
The proposal is the Selectboard will establish a budget task force to determine whether an operating tax override of proposition 2½ shall be recommended to support the town’s FY27 budget.
The recommendation will detail the amount of any override, its allocation and for how long it’s intended support until consideration of the next tax override.
The task force will be a temporary committee consisting of seven or nine members and will include a member of the Selectboard, a member of the School Committee, a member of the Appropriations Committee and a member of the Capital Planning Committee.
The remaining members will be appointed. Wong, McLaughlin and their respective staff will also participate in the budget task force process, but will not be members of the committee.
The goal of the task force is to submit a detailed written report of its findings and recommendations no later than Feb. 9, 2026.
Budget documents can be found at tinyurl.com/drynrkyn.
