SOUTH HADLEY — The Select Board approved adding an adjustment counselor at Micheal E. Smith Middle School using 0pioid settlement funds to prevent drug and alcohol use among youth but not without push back from board members about the sustainability of the position.

“With all the loss of the positions that the school suffered in this coming fiscal year budget, we’re now looking to add another position when we had I think 21 that were eliminated from the school budget,” Select Board Member Jeff Cyr said at Tuesday’s board meeting. “ If we were staff healthy and this was coming to me, I would say a hundred percent, but the fact that we lost so many positions in the FY 25 budget and to add another position with a grant, technically, is difficult for me.”

The board on Tuesday allocated $140,000 of the $313,000 South Hadley has thus far received in opioid settlement money to pay for an adjustment counselor for fiscal years 2025 and 2026. With about $1.2 million expected to come to the town from the settlement, the adjustment counselor will use 10% of these funds.

After fiscal year 2026, interim School Superintendent Mark McLuaghlin said the school department intends to absorb the cost of the adjustment councilor into its budget.

 “What we know, not just anecdotally, but through our data over the years, is that students with untreated social emotional challenges turn to drugs and alcohol or any kind of controlled substance as a means to deal with those challenges,” McLaughlin said. “And so, the provision of a adjustment counselor is entirely in our view in line with the goals of the opioid money, which is prevention.”

Town Administrator Lisa Wong explained that prevention of drug and alcohol use and substance-use disorder among youth populations is a high priority among public safety, public health and school officials. The town’s school department is the only public department that has an established network of resources and support for students. 

“Right now, if I said youth prevention, the top organization that can do that is the schools because the schools will have the ability to hire somebody who has a whole network of people to work with,” Wong said. “They will have the ability to get confidential information, be able to be fed risk behaviors or information that can help their caseload and be able to pass on other recommendations that they need."

Wong added that the Board of Health found alternative funding sources for many other project ideas town officials have brainstormed. For instance, Wong proposed establishing a harm reduction site for sterile needles, needle disposal and overdose reduction, but then Tapestry Health offered to set up a location for free. Opioid prevention in adolescence is the one area that Public Health Director Sharon Hart didn’t find an alternative for.

“If we say because we can't sustain this in two years we shouldn't spend the money that we have right now, I don't have other crisis projects to present to you,” Wong said. “The opiate funds cannot be used for any of these other positions that we're concerned about in the schools, and the schools should not and cannot eliminate those core positions they have in the schools and fund this. So I think this is what I consider to be a perfect complement.”

While all the Select Board members who spoke supported the reasoning behind the addition of the counselor, Cyr and Chair Andrea Miles expressed concerns over spending grant money on school positions after the school budget cut over 20 positions after federal and state grant money dried up. Miles noted that the Select Board allocated ARPA funds early in grant timeline, preventing other good projects presented to the board later down the line from receiving funding. 

“This is the only thing we've been presented with so far. We haven't had a report from the Board of Health about some of their suggestions or from maybe the (Recreation) Department,” she said. “I haven't heard any suggestions. This is the first one and so I think it's important that we are careful in how we spend the money.”

Ultimately, the Board approved the request in a 3-1-1 vote.