Chair John Bruno said that he received a letter from the Chair of the Hanson Select Board regarding regionalization of pond management as well as whether the Plymouth County Commissioners could take a role in said management. He read from the letter saying, “Currently each town has its own pond management plan and allocates funds for this purpose; we believe there may be scales of economy and thus savings if we ban together in solving this problem. We recognize that the Conservation Commission in each town would have to be part of the conversation as will the Select Boards in each town. My reason for reaching out is to gauge whether your town would be interested in opening up a dialogue with Plymouth County Commissioners.” Bruno said they weren’t looking for a commitment just yet and said he believed it was a great idea. “Yea, I view it as a strength in numbers thing,” Selectman Jonathan Selig said. Town Administrator Cody Haddad said that it came about because the County is looking to provide more services to its member communities.
Special and Annual Town Meeting Warrant
Regarding the Warrant, Haddad said, “One of the changes to note is we have historically always included the line-item budgets for the school department – Silver Lake and the elementary school; they don’t have line- item budgets so hence we cannot include those in the warrant this year.” He noted that the goal would be to have them in the next few weeks and have them available on the website as well as having them printed to give out at Town Meeting. Haddad went over each article including Article 7 which is the potential approval of the solar pilot on River St. “This is one our Assessor and Counsel are still working to fully negotiate that solar pilot. If we do not have that in the next week or so… we will just skip over.” Article 9 is the Community Preservation Act which Haddad said the Selectmen would need to decide whether to do a 1 percent surcharge or something different. “I know we’re fiscally at a tight spot right now, but I do feel like if we came in at a 1.5 percent that might be more beneficial,” Selig said. The other Selectmen agreed.
Haddad said that Article 15 is an additional $25,000 to fund an HVAC unit at the high school. He explained that $100,000 had previously been approved at Town Meeting but the project was delayed and the cost is anticipated to have risen. Haddad explained that the other towns are funding their portion through American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds while Halifax is paying for it out of stabilization.
Haddad said that there was a placeholder article for Special Town Meeting. The schools are anticipating a deficit in their special education line item and they don’t yet know to what exent. “They seem to think that they are going to be able to cover the deficit with their other line items in the budget; they’ve implemented a spending freeze but they do not have that information ready so we wanted to put a placeholder article in case we do have to fund that deficit to some extent… just in case,” he explained. The Selectmen voted to approve the warrant.
Delegation of Educational Funding
Haddad said that this topic was requested by Selig. “I noticed with our education budgeting process this year, it felt challenging. To me it felt like a lot of the challenges weren’t necessarily on the municipal side but more on a lack of support at the State level so I felt like it was worth us to send letters to the State House leadership just to convey how frustrating the process is where we’re seeing these giant spikes in special education costs, but the State isn’t really meeting those costs for us so what we’re seeing happening is… general education students are often feeling the crunch,” he explained. He shared a draft of the letter he wrote with his fellow Selectmen. The Board agreed to send the letter.
Request to Raise Boards at Furnace St. culvert
Haddad told the Selectmen that he was contacted by Brad Chase with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries. He said that himself, Highway Surveyor Steve Hayward, and Board of Health Agent Bob Valery met with a few individuals from the State to discuss the town’s priority to get the herring back to Monponsett. Haddad said that Chase felt that raising the Boards at the Furnace St. Culvert would assist in allowing the herring to flow through. Chase is also requesting that Halifax supports moving forward with a study on the hydraulogy, hydraulics, and conditions and operations of the Furnace St. and Elm St. culverts. Jeremy Gillespie spoke up regarding the boards saying, “they’re just slowing down the waterflow, backing it up, they’re creating eutrophic conditions in the river; it is a river that flows out of Monponsett… this needs to be done pretty quick… once the water reaches 50 degrees we’re going to see the herring come up.”
Appointments
Heather Sylvia of the Tipsy Mermaid appeared before the Board to request a one day liquor license for The Farm at Raven Brook. The event will take place on May 12 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. where mocktails and wine will be served. Tami Herchel also appeared before the Board to request use of the town’s roadways for the Ragnar Road New England Race. The event starts in Connecticut and ends in Quincy. The race will come through Halifax on May 17-18. Selig pointed out that the runners will be stopping in Halifax during the late hours of the night to the early morning hours. “You won’t even know we’re here,” Herchel said. The Selectmen approved the race coming through the town unanimously.
Inter Municipal Agreement with Duxbury Regarding Dispatch Services
The Selectmen voted to agree to a one year contract with Duxbury at a cost of $200,000. Haddad said that they do anticipate another municipality joining thus lowering the fee after this year.
Morse Brothers Update
Haddad told the Selectmen that the Morse Brothers had finished all work under their existing earth removal permit. He said that they would need to appear before the Board again for any further work. Bruno said that for the most part the few complaints that they had were with respect to the trucks moving too slowly. “As far as I can tell, it went smoothly,” Bruno said. There was one incident with a special education bus that was easily resolved as well. Amy Troup spoke up insisting that the Board also received “plenty of complaints” regarding the earth removal being in the aquifer protection zone. “So put it on record that there were actual complaints… our water is not the same anymore,” she said.
Town Administrator Updates
Haddad told the Selectmen that they would be bringing forth an applicant for the Town Accountant position after several successful interviews. He also told them that Halifacts was now live saying that he hoped residents would go there for information rather than believing hearsay on social media. More information can be found at https://www.halifax-ma.org/home/news/halifacts-halifaxs-online-community-forum.

Silver Lake Regional School Committee met Tuesday, April 9, at the regional high school in Kingston.
High on the list of items discussed was the budget, and making it work, despite current challenges. Paula Hatch, chairman, explained that Silver Lake isn’t the only school district in the state faced with these extraordinary challenges; it is happening throughout the state. Hatch referenced an article in the Boston Globe that detailed new accounting requirements.
Began with a School Choice hearing. Superintendent Dr. Jill Proulx explained that school choice would allow students from other school districts to pay tuition to attend Silver Lake schools. Silver Lake has opted not to participate in school choice at this time. Committee member Jason Fraser made a motion to opt out of school choice and gave current classroom sizes and budgetary concerns as reasons for doing so. The motion was seconded and the vote unanimous to decline participation in school choice.
Carl Pike, a longtime member of the Kingston Finance Committee, addressed the assembly saying despite his being a prime supporter of the schools, the current education increase that Kingston is looking at is $2.9 million, or a 10.3% increase over last year. That’s on top of a 7% increase and 1.9 million for last year. “Well, any of you that know anything about finances, budgets, Proposition 2 ½, you cannot live with 7% and 10% increases every year… Despite that, we’re continuing to work to find some way of justifying it.” Pike went on to say that he took an informal vote at the last finance committee meeting and said that he feared his committee will not be able to recommend this kind of increase in the budget.
Pike closed his comments with an invitation to all present to attend the next Finance Committee meeting on April 17 to comment on whatever they think is right. “Rest assured, that the town administration in Kingston, the Board of Selectmen in Kingston, the Finance Committee in Kingston, intends to continue to support the schools, the education, the administrators, the teachers, that everybody that we can within reasonable budget limitations to provide the best education that we can for the residents and their children of the Town of Kingston.”
Superintendent Jill Proulx introduced Silver Lake District Business Director Sarah Hickey who reported to the Silver Lake Regional School Committee on Budget Version VI, incorporating many of the proposed reductions discussed at prior meetings to bring the budget into line with funds available.
Budget Version VI, showed a total Silver Lake Budget of $40,624,059, with a reduction of $855,000 as voted by the Silver Lake school committee at their March 22 meeting. As a result of that vote to reduce the budget, Hickey updated the assessments to all towns, including the revenue that was counted toward the assessments with the following result: Halifax at its April 1 meeting voted for FY25 is $6,965,138. Kingston voted $14,568,739 at its April 2 meeting, and Plympton voted $3,975,000 at its March 25 meeting.
The total cost of education for Halifax in FY25 is $15,580,356, representing a 4.9% increase over FY24. For Kingston, it is $31,312,851, a 10.6% increase over FY24. For Plympton, the total cost of education for FY25 is $7,279,885, a 6.8% increase over FY24. The total cost of education in the three towns is $54,173,093, or an 8.4% overall increase.
Silver Lake District Tier I proposed reductions in transportation and technology:
Reduce Late Bus by one day, savings $11,732; reduce Pre-K technology by $1500, Middle School Technology by $29,920, and High School Technology by $36,190. Subtotal $79,342 savings.
Tier II reductions include $5,700 PreK Technology, $17,500 in Middle School Technology, $15,000 in cuts to High School Technology, approx $40,000 in retirement savings due to two retirements and a proposal to move the food service director to the revolving account for a $98,715 reduction, so the Tier I reductions total $176,915 and Tier II reductions equal $256,257.
Silver Lake integrated pre-school reductions of $2,500 in supplies and dues and a reduction of $229,950 for out-of-district tuition. Tier II would be a staffing decrease of one full-time equivalent position of $65,000 so the Tier I reduction of $232,450 and Tier II reduction of $65,000 gives a total of $297,450. The integrated pre-school proposal reduction of one teacher has no impact on teaching and learning, according to administration. The IEP teams will use a data-driven process supplied by student evaluations and progress monitoring systems to determine the just right service level of each student. The model uses a four-day-a- week half-day preschool program model. Hickey went on to say that this approach will increase available seats for students with disabilities in the integrated preschool program.
Plympton’s representative to the committee Jason Fraser asked, “Did we find a way to do this without laying off anyone?” Through attrition and various commodities cuts, with the whole package of cuts, Superintendent Proulx answered “Yes, that is the intent.”
High school principal Michaela Gill reviewed her school’s budget and was able to come up with $151,600 in cuts without staff reduction; the biggest cuts were in supplies, new equipment replacement, and athletics. She noted that the largest share of supplies came from consumables in the Art and Science programs. She also noted that she was looking to make two FTE cuts. “Although we are absorbing them through attrition, they are currently vacant positions due to resignations or retirements.” Not filling those positions moving forward will still have an impact on student learning and a small impact on teaching stipends filled by teachers for extra-curricular programs.
Becky Couet, Middle School Principal, detailed budget cuts to her school with Tier 1 cuts totaling $81,943 coming from supplies, curriculum, and technology. Tier II cuts – staffing – brought one FTE unit saving $65,000. Total Tier I and Tier II proposed reductions of $146,943. Couet explained that the majority of the cuts were in supplies and consumables, new library books, art and music replenishment of some supplies, and supplementary reading resources.
From the principal’s line, dues, signage, PCIS incentives, and guest speakers all were reduced. Technology saw reduction of repair line, delay on the eFax program, no additional Adobe licenses, supplies, document cameras, reduction of Chromebook replacements, and limited docking station.
From the equipment line, conference tables and furniture all took a reduction as well as a flip-form riser for the music department. PD saw a 50% decrease in PD conference opportunities for all staff. Under Other, additional guest speakers, piano tuning, and transportation or interscholastic sports were reduced.
The total savings for Tier 1 are $545,318. Tier II Savings are $461,315.
Chairman Hatch noted that as the principals were enumerating their budget cuts they also said they could do without these things “next year”, meaning we should expect to see them back in the budget requests the following year.
Committee member Fraser pointed out that there would be circuit breaker funds flowing into the district next year. “We’re going to have to be very careful as to how we replace the items we’re cutting this year, but I see the ability for us to restore most, if not all of what we’re cutting this year, once we have circuit breaker next year.” Stating that it doesn’t necessarily mean that the schools replace exactly what’s on the cut list because “we need to take into account some of the areas of dire need that we’ve all been witness to over the past several years. “ Fraser predicted that while Silver Lake High School will be in a much better place next year, the town school committees will face serious challenges as their circuit breaker money runs out. He described a bounceback budget situation between the Lake and the locals. He explained that committees will need to work together as a whole to assess the total cost of education.
Hatch said she encourages everyone to attend town meetings to support their schools and the budget. “We don’t want to make cuts. We’ll make the smartest decisions we possibly can with all the factors that we have.”

The Kingston School Committee met on Tuesday, April 2. It was a packed house with even more attendees joining the meeting virtually.
The Committee opened the meeting to anyone from the public wishing to speak. Carl Pike, who serves on the Finance Committee and is a retired town treasurer, spoke on behalf of the town. Pike said that he has been a huge supporter of the schools and their budgets for years. “We have always, since I’ve been involved, tried to be very conservative in our financial management. We’ve tried to service the various functions of the various departments – the schools – while at the same time thinking about the residents, the annual tax bills, etc… Proposition 2 ½ says that we are able to tax our residents an increase of 2 ½ percent every year. We always hope to get some new growth… so that gives us another percent, so we try to keep the budget increases each year to about 3 ½ percent,” Pike said. He went on to say that the initial goal was to keep each department around a 3 ½ percent increase and noted that most came in under 5 percent. He continued saying that the schools’ budget came in around 15 percent. “We didn’t feel that we could come anywhere near providing 15 percent increase and being fair to other departments, other functions, and to the taxpayers.”
Pike said that after working with the schools, the current increase stands around 11 percent which would result in somewhere around a $400 increase to home property taxes. “In order to balance everything out across the towns, I encourage the School Committee, the School Administration, to work to find some solutions where we continue to provide the education we all want to provide but we find ways to make the numbers balance better. And I assure the parents that are sitting here, there is no one in town government that wants to sacrifice education… we all recognize that education in almost every community in Massachusetts is going to be 50 percent of the town budget,” Pike said.
Former School Committee member of 15 years and current Selectman Eric Crone also addressed the crowd. “One of the issues, obviously, when you’re making cuts, you’re making cuts potentially to programs, making class sizes bigger, or making it less desirable for families to send their kids to our school district,” Crone said. He pointed out that it leaves families with few options including moving or sending their kids to private schools. He noted, however, that charter schools do take money away from the town’s schools. “When that kid leaves our district and goes to the charter school, the amount of money that we lose, the expenses don’t go down, so if we have 10 kids leave and go to the charter school, you can’t lay off a teacher,” he continued.
Another former School Committee member and current Selectman Sheila Vaughn also spoke. “Every year we have to go up and I understand that this year is exponentially harder than most years because there are a lot of changes that we somewhat knew going into it, that it was going to be tough because of the preschool going over to Silver Lake and, again, like Eric said, special education cannot be cut… so when the cuts come, they come from the regular day budget,” Vaughn said. She continued, “We have to fund special education… Kingston has actually done a very good job this year of trying to stay within the budget, but this was mandated because DESE [Department of Education and Secondary Education] needed it to come through.” She implored voters that they need to come out to Town Meeting to make sure that their voices are heard.
President of the Kingston Teacher’s Association, and a 17-year teacher at Kingston Elementary School, Heidi Fox spoke on behalf of the educators of Kingston. “We love our students; we think of them as part of our family. We take pride in providing them with rich, high-quality education and engaging learning experiences. We instill within our students a love of learning, foster the courage to follow their dreams, encourage them to think outside the box and ask questions, and teach them to collaborate and be team players,” she said. Fox continued, “We understand that we are facing financial challenges. We’re all struggling with increased costs, however, by cutting our classroom-based staff, it strips away one of the greatest resources available to these children – their teachers.” She asked them to consider “trimming at the administrative level” rather than from teachers. Her remarks were met with applause.
Superintendent Jill Proulx spoke saying, “As we build these budgets, we had a number of changes that we were required to make and in addition we have been faced with rising costs like many schools throughout the State: inflation, rising costs of out-of-district tuitions, rising costs of transportation, rising costs to everything from paper to the crayons that the kids use. It is all leading to increases in our budgets that we are finding difficult to sustain.” These increases were presented in mid-March at a joint school committee meeting. The revised budget is a result of that meeting.
Director of Finance for Silver Lake, Sarah Hickey, spoke on the revised budget. She said that an additional 240 grant application reduced the budget by $170,944 and additional Circuit Breaker funding reduced it by another $869,655. Additional changes included a reduction of $290,428 from the salary lines and a technology grant that represented a decrease of $70,000. Increases included $413,556 in additional out-of-district tuitions and transportations. There was also an insurance adjustment which represented an increase of over $100,000.
Hickey said that Kingston’s assessment represented over a $4 million increase over the previous fiscal year. The total cost of education in Kingston is $29,818,034 which represents a 5.3 percent increase over fiscal year ’24. “When you look at contractual obligations… that is not just, yes, teachers have contracts and contracts including teachers increased, contractual obligations from my point of view… is the cost for the contract to maintain the elevator in the building… contracts for copy machines and printers,” Hickey explained. “The price for contracts has gone up,” she added.
Proulx said that they would be presenting a tiered approach to budget cuts that evening. Kingston Intermediate Principal Andrew Materna and Kingston Elementary School Principal Kerri Whipple spoke regarding cuts. They said that the first place they looked to make cuts was from supplies and other items that don’t directly affect the student experience. Whipple recommended funding an ELL teacher position from an E.S. fund (emergency shelter funding). Staff cuts include 6 paraprofessionals and 2.9 full-time unit A staff, likely including classroom teachers. Whipple said that despite the cuts, classroom sizes would remain under 30.
Like Whipple, Materna went through the tiered cuts beginning with supplies and materials and moving into staff cuts in Tier 3. If classroom teachers were cut, most class sizes would increase an average of 4 students.
School Committee member Jeanne Coleman said, “I would be comfortable bringing a budget to Town Meeting without any staff cuts and allowing the public to be able to support the staff; I’ve heard from not one person in town that has asked us to cut staff.” She advocated that everyone there that evening show up to Town Meeting to support the budget. Chair Timothy Lewis said he felt that additional cuts could be made to lines such as legal and substitute. “I believe there is other money in this budget we can save,” he told everyone. Coleman made a motion that they approve the revised budget without tier 3 staff cuts. The approved cuts in tiers 1 and 2 represented around $388,000. Lewis said he felt that they should be cutting more than that amount in order to be a good partner with the town.
Coleman noted that many people moved to Kingston for the good school system and that they wanted to be careful not to make cuts that would drastically affect the schools. Coleman also said that they recently did an audit on the central office which found that they were four employees short. “Not only are these administrators doing the work for our district, for Kingston specifically, they are also doing the work for Plympton, Halifax, and Silver Lake… they’re basically working around the clock and we’re already understaffed as it is,” she said.
Someone asked what would trigger a potential teacher cut in the middle of the year. Proulx said, “If we didn’t think we could absorb the areas where we had overspent through other line items, we would need to make a decision. With the budget freeze, sometimes we can’t make up some of those differences… it may or may not be likely which can sometimes trigger the School Committee to consider something like that.” Asked if that had ever happened, Proulx said she has never been a part of such a decision but she is aware it has happened in other school districts.
The motion to pass the budget with only the tier one and tier two cuts was passed with only two no votes. Coleman also made a motion to pass the Kingston School Committee budget for fiscal year ’25 at $14,568,739.78. Like the motion before, it passed 3-2.
The School Committee also held a school choice meeting. “School choice is a program in the Commonwealth where if the School Committee were to vote to approve school choice, we would be required to accept students from other communities,” Chair Timothy Lewis explained. The Committee voted unanimously not to accept school choice.
The Committee also voted to approve a grant of just over $12,000 to be used toward their nutritional program. Proulx said that it would likely be spent to replace outdated equipment.
KIS sixth grade teacher Dave Palana provided a Teacher’s Corner update. He said that the sixth grade took their first ELA MCAS that day and would take the second one the following day. Palana noted that they had the book fair for both KES and KIS. He also told the Committee that they have been trying to increase awareness of recycling through some different initiatives. Finally, Palana said that they have been working on different lessons related to the solar eclipse.
A PTO update was also provided where it was said that some modest funds would be seen from a Whitman-Hanson versus Silver Lake parent hockey game.