By KENNEDY GRIFFIN
(Greenfield, MA) Contracts for Greenfield public school teachers are underway as they have been expired for over 450 days. The Greenfield City Council had a first reading at Wednesday’s meeting to appropriate $200,000 from Free Cash to Contract Stabilization Fund for the Greenfield Public Schools. However, the school committee presentation and public comment, showed that this amount would not be enough to give teachers and instructional assistants adequate raises to retain them.
Greenfield School Committee Chair, Amy Proietti, said a 1% raise for classroom teachers alone (not including instructional assistants and other educators, whose contracts are separate from classroom teachers although negotiations happen concurrently) would cost $142,483 for fiscal year 2022 and $150,199 for fiscal year 2023. However, “no one is talking about giving our educators only a 1% raise.”
Councilor Katherine Golub said “our budget is a reflection of our values” and that Greenfield’s school budget represents 34% of the City budget, a number she found out of line with surrounding towns like Orange that allocates 54% of their budget to their schools.
Judy Bennett, a Greenfield resident and Greenfield High School educator, said during public comment that “schools are the barometer of the community,” and that in regards to enrollment numbers going down, families are not going to want to move to a community that does not respect its teachers.