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.

The Plympton School Commmittee met Monday, March 25 to discuss the school’s budget and how it pertains to the overall town budget. It was a packed audience. Chair of the School Committee Jason Fraser got things started saying, “I’ve been working very closely with town leadership since late January… for how we were going to handle the increases we were seeing toward the cost of education for our small town… our annual town budget is roughly $13 million and the increases we were seeing for education alone were north of $700,000 in increases.” Fraser continued, “In working with the town they said that they could afford approximately $400,000 in increases meaning that we would have to find a way, between Silver Lake’s budget and Dennett’s budget, to cut over $300,000.” Fraser also said that in a meeting in mid-March, Silver Lake cut approximately $155,000 from Plympton’s portion of that budget. Fraser noted that it would mean the Dennett cutting nearly $170,000 that evening which he said would “include reduction of force to staff members here at the school.”
Fraser said that around 4 p.m. that evening he was approached by the Town Administrator Liz Dennehy who offered one-time funds of $62,000. The funds are American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) revenue replacement. “It will allow us this evening not to have to make any reduction of force and keep our staff whole and complete,” Fraser told the crowd. This declaration was met with rousing applause. “There are still some areas we need to trim back the budget even with the $462,000 the town of Plympton has given us to meet the requirements of our schools to function,” he added.
Superintendent Jill Proulx and Business Director Sarah Hickey led off the budget presentation. Hickey began by outlining the changes to the Plympton budget since they last met in late February and presented the Version II budget. The first change was a REAP grant allocation to offset kindergarten tuition in the amount of $24,217. An increase of $1,103 was added due to shared cost adjustments. Version IV of the budget comes in at $4,089,098 and requires a reduction of $173,565. Hickey also said that there was a 31 percent increase in the assessment for Plympton to Silver Lake. She said that the assessment to Silver Lake plus the Dennett budget, put the total cost of education for Plympton at $7,220,419 or a 5.9 percent increase overall. Fraser noted that they would need support at Town Meeting to pass the budget.
Hickey went over some of the overall increased costs in the FY’ 25 budget including contractual obligations, health insurance, special education tuition and transportation, supplies, and utilities. She noted that contractual obligations are not limited to teachers and staff, but also include other contracted services. “We are responsible to take care of the educational well-being of all students in Plympton regardless of their needs; it’s something that this Committee has always held to both legally, but also morally,” Fraser said. He continued, “And we can see the position that it’s pushing us into with the State not really coming through with it’s side of funding to help support the towns to meet the needs of these children.”
Proulx said that the next steps would be further discussion with the towns. She noted that the Finance Committee was set to meet the following week. She went over proposed cuts including minimal ones to both Principal supply and supplies. The technology line was reduced by $15k as was the curriculum resources line. Other reductions included $14k for the sub line as well as $31,200 from a math interventionist line. The math interventionist position is not yet filled so will not result in a loss of a job. Proulx was asked for a list of items and programs that would be included in the cuts. Programs such as Reading A to Z and Typing Club were reported as proposed cuts. Fraser said that while they don’t normally take private donations for the school’s operating budget, something like that could help offset some of the cuts. Fraser said that while the School Committee doesn’t look forward to taking away any resources from the Plympton students, it does bring some relief knowing no one would be losing their job. He thanked Selectmen Chair Christine Joy, Town Administrator Elizabeth Dennehy, and Finance Committee member Marilyn Browne for working with the schools to get them the $462,000 in increases. The Committee then voted to approve the new version of the budget at $3,975,000.
Once the budget was voted, the Committee took up other business. Fraser said that he met with the Town Manager regarding dogs being allowed on the Dennett property. He said that at this time they are looking into a potential dog park and noted that there was no intent to implement a leash law in town. The town asked the Committee to continue to prohibit dogs from the Dennett property.
Fraser provided the legislative update saying, “we actually made out quite well in Plympton this year with Chapter 70 funding… we received $152,000 more this year than we received last year. One of the ways we’re funding the increases in education we’re seeing here in this town.” He went on to say that it didn’t work out that way for many other towns in the State. He noted that the State is allowing prices of private schools to go up significantly while not supporting local public schools with Chapter 70 funding. “Currently I and colleagues are asking the State of Massachusetts to increase the inflationary index from 1.25 to closer to 4.0,” Fraser said. Fraser said that the per pupil increment for Chapter 70 is currently $30 per pupil, but that it was being requested to increase that to $100 per pupil. He also said they are also asking the State to increase Circuit Breaker funding to 75 percent amongst other things.
Principal Peter Veneto provided a Principal’s Report. He said that the talent show the previous Friday evening was very successful and thanked CASA as well as all of the parent volunteers for their efforts. He noted that after 13 years with Dennett Elementary, paraprofessional Tracie Sweeney accepted a position elsewhere as an adjustment counselor. “Happy for her, very sad for us,” Veneto said. He also told the Committee about report cards, parent-teacher conferences, and the bookfair. Additionally, he said that MCAS season was beginning and said that the fifth grade had a visit from a comfort dog ahead of the exams.
While Assistant Superintendent Ryan Lynch was unable to attend, Superintendent Proulx did tell the Committee on his behalf that he had submitted a copy of the Student Opportunity Act Plan for their review and acceptance. Proulx said that every three years, districts are required to submit an updated plan to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). “Each district is required to identify one to three evidence-based programs they are implementing to close achievement gaps,” Proulx said. A Committee member asked about a position that was being funded through Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER). Fraser explained that ESSER funding is federal funding that exists for just one more year before expiring. Lynch’s proposal included using Student Opportunity Act funds to cover some of those expenses after the additional funding isn’t available any longer through ESSER. Proulx noted that beginning in FY’ 26 they will need to find a different funding source. After significant discussion, the Committee did vote to approve Lynch’s proposed submission with just one member abstaining from the vote.

The Plympton Board of Selectmen met in-person on Monday, March 11 with all three members present.
Selectman John Traynor said that the Board of Health issued a letter stating that the podiatry services for the Council on Aging could not be held at the Town House. “So I think we basically have to go back and have a plan B.” Director of Elder Affairs Colleen Thompson spoke on the matter saying, “I’m a little upset. It never even occurred to me that we would need to speak to the Board of Health. And in my correspondence with Liz [Dennehy] that never came up.” Thompson also said that she felt that the discussions around the services escalated quickly and said that while the Board of Health argues that she didn’t ask their permission, she was not included in the letter they sent despite it directly affecting her department. Thompson called the Board of Health’s arguments “spurious at best” and said that there is little difference between the podiatry services and the blood pressure and sugar and cholesterol checks that are done. “There’s no privacy and there’s medical waste, but we do them because it’s not really a big deal,” Thompson said. She continued saying that there is support from the nurse and noted that the doctor “has done this for years” and knows how to sanitize properly, etc. She spoke with Carver who runs a similar program about shared services, but said it is so popular that they already have a waitlist.
Thompson told the Selectmen, “I think we need to figure out a way to get the seniors more services in Plympton.” She emphasized that more thought needs to be given to how this can be done. She proposed creating a medical room to be used for medical needs. Selectmen Chair Christine Joy told Thompson that the podiatry services are not a “dead issue” saying they just need to find a place better suited to the program. Traynor said that he believes most would prefer a public space over a doctor going into homes due to safety concerns. “Let us take this back and see what we can come up with,” Joy said.
Regarding annual town meeting preparations, Town Administrator Liz Dennehy said, “At this time, we’re actively working with all of the departments on articles, budgets, all of that, so all of that is in full swing.” The annual town meeting warrant closed on the last Monday in March. Regarding budgets, Dennehy also said, “Our financial team internally, we’re all working very hard to figure out our finances going forward and how we might want to structure things and keep our debt at an even level as some of that falls off.”
As customary, the Selectmen discussed their raves for the last few weeks. “I think I have a rave though for the Financial Committee that’s been working on the Fire Station; I think you guys, which is Marilyn Browne from the Finance Committee, Kathryn Shepard, Christine Kelly [Treasurer/Collector], Elizabeth [Dennehy], Lisa Hart [Accountant]… and Jon Wilhelmsen, I think this is kind of outside their normal, everybody’s basically not getting paid, they’re volunteers so I’m very impressed with their willingness to put in time; hopefully it will pay off,” Traynor said.
Joy said that her rave was for Colleen Thompson. “I love that she feels so strongly about this (foot services) that she doesn’t want to let it go. It is an important issue. We just need to find a way to make it work in a suitable location,” Joy said. She continued, “It’s definitely a service that’s needed. If there’s waitlists for other towns than it’s something that we need to offer.”
Traynor proposed reaching out to neighboring towns. “This might be an opportunity for a shared-services grant,” Joy said. Selectman Mark Russo emphasized Joy’s rave for Thompson. His second rave was in regard to shared services saying, “I think we need to continue to always be on the lookout for shared services that might work and might model and bring forth others. I’m glad that comes up and I think that’s one of the ways out of the endless financial struggles the town has.” His final rave was for the “super raw early spring days.” He said that those days really make the later beautiful spring days “all the more wonderful.”