BELCHERTOWN — Weeks after learning the Belchertown school budget is $2.1 million short of funding level services, the School Committee is contemplating staff layoffs and reductions, cuts of extracurricular activities — including sports and performing arts — and closing Cold Spring School.

“No decisions have been made, but I am going to tell you what we’ve been talking about,” Superintendent Brian Cameron told the committee this week. “It changes every day.”

Cameron presented the first of several preliminary budgets to the committee and an audience full of parents, teachers and Belchertown alumni Tuesday night at Chestnut Hill Community School.

The plan Cameron presented includes the possible elimination or reduction of 23 staff positions, of which about five are retirements or resignations that will go unfilled.

Additionally, the district will consider selling a school bus for an estimated $89,000, reducing extracurricular activities such as after school clubs and sports for an estimated $70,000, closing the pool at Chestnut Hill School for $35,000 and cutting back on instructional materials for $69,500.

The result, Cameron said, would be longer bus rides, larger class sizes, and cuts to performing arts, world languages, after-school clubs and sports offerings.

It’s too early to know what the exact cuts may be, school officials said.

Closing Cold Springs School, which houses pre-kindergarten and kindergarten, would save the district $500,000 in operational costs. If allowed by the state, the district would redistribute the grades among the remaining open schools, with pre-K and kindergarten at Swift River, third grade moving to Chestnut Hill, and the sixth grade joining seventh and eighth grade students at Jabish Brook.

“I have heard a lot of discussion about closing schools. The schools can just close schools. They can do this. They can do that,” Cameron said. “You’re absolutely right with these cuts that are coming. We can definitely close the school, but remember, we’re losing 17.2 positions.”

These preliminary cuts arose from a tri-board meeting with the School Committee, Select Board and Finance Committee on Feb. 6, where town leaders acknowledged that revenue is far below the amount needed to fund level-services budgets for both the school and the town.

The Finance Committee and Select Board shot down the School Committee’s request for a Proposition 2½ override, calling the proposal “fiscally unsustainable.” Beyond that, the other boards offered no immediate or long-term plan to raise revenue to forestall budget cuts in the future.

“I was really disheartened to hear there’s no plan going forward,” School Committee Chair Heidi Gutekenst said. “We could be dealing with cuts like this for the next five or 10 years. I really want to know what the plan is, and if the plan is not a 2½ override, then the plan has to be something.”

Get creative with cuts

Zachary Wall, a seventh grade student at Jabish Brook Middle School, pleaded with the School Committee to maintain the hours and salaries of his teachers. Specifically, he mentioned Jason Mosall, band teacher at Chestnut Hill, who helped his band class grow as musicians and facilitated a close-knit community of students.

“But it’s not just Mr. Mosall. It’s all of our teachers, from math to English to science,” Wall said. “They guide us, encourage us, and help us to be our best. I’m asking you to think about how much our teachers mean to us and how much taking them away will impact us, not just in our education, but in the whole school.”

Many parents and teachers applauded Wall’s comments and echoed his sentiments by urging committee members to eliminate as few student-facing positions as possible. They also encouraged the committee to work on persuading the community, Finance Committee and Select Board to support a Proposition 2½ override. On Thursday, Belchertown parents started a Change.org petition to fully fund the school department’s budget.

“It really does concern me as a teacher and as a parent to see what the class sizes are right now, and to see that they’re going to go up,” parent and teacher Will Bangs said. “We’ve certainly felt that in our house with the reduction of one last gym class during the week.”

Like School Committee members, many speakers called for the town to come up with a revenue plan for the future.

Gutekenst and Cameron outlined several ways the district previously offset cuts, such as raising athletics fees or enlisting the help of the parent-run Belchertown Education Foundation, but the group itself has little flexibility to generate the necessary revenue.

A few speakers also asked the School Committee and town residents in the room to engage the aging population in town, specifically residents without young kids on fixed incomes. Only with the support of Town Meeting, parent Fritz Kuhnlenz said, will the Select Board support an override.

“I’d be very curious to hear how this committee is interacting with people above the age of 55 and how we are bringing the town together around this idea, because whatever happens, if we don’t have them on board, it’s not going to be a yes,” Kuhnlenz said.

Despite Belchertown paying less per pupil than 91% of Massachusetts school districts, Swift River physical education teacher Casey Kibbe said that Belchertown teachers do more with less, consistently outperforming in music, athletics and academics. With her daughter entering kindergarten next year, Kibbe expressed concern that the quality of education in Belchertown will decrease if students lose access to extracurricular activities.

“Many know too that my physical education department was really hit hard last year with these budget cuts, and every day I see these kids tell me we hate this, we never get to move,” she said. “I’m hearing parents give me the trend that their kids fight tooth and nail to not go to school, conveniently on the days they don’t have a special.”

Rising need,declining resources

Student absenteeism is also a problem, Cameron said, noting that the number of students who miss more than 10% of school days has risen 25% in the wake of COVID, accompanied by increases in mental health issues.

In the past decade, the number of students with special needs rose from 388 to 458, requiring more staff to create an in-district program to serve students. The district also hired two additional English as a second language teachers since the student population that needs these resources has risen dramatically. The district has also brought in additional nursing staff to help with an increase in students with social-emotional challenges.

“I just want to be clear, we don’t have a choice. We need to provide these services,” Cameron said. “Just like everything else increasing in the town, so are student needs.”

Emilee Klein can be reached at eklein@gazettenet.com.