Local news

Amherst school committee cuts $1.2 million before the fall term

Four positions go unfilled and the middle school loses its late bus. Parents packed the hearing anyway.

By Marisol Reyes · August 11, 2026

The Amherst School Committee voted 5-2 Monday night to cut $1.2 million from the school budget three weeks before classes start, leaving four positions unfilled and ending the middle school late bus.

The vote came after two and a half hours of public comment in the middle school cafeteria, which the district opened as an overflow room and then filled anyway. Facilities staff counted 214 people. Forty-one of them signed up to speak, and the committee let all of them, which is why the meeting ended at 11:20 p.m.

The cuts close a gap the district has been watching since March. State aid came in $742,000 below what the district had penciled in, the health insurance rate went up 11.4 percent, and the town assessment held flat.

"There is no version of this where I get to be the good guy," committee chair Nadine Solberg said before the vote. "We can take it out of the reserve and be back here in February with a bigger hole, or we can take it now. I have done the first one twice. I am not doing it again."

What comes out

Most of the money, about $685,000, comes from four positions that were open and will now stay open. Those are a middle school math interventionist, a half-time elementary art teacher split between Fort River and Wildwood, a district technology aide and a high school adjustment counselor.

The late bus is $86,000 a year. It leaves the middle school at 4:45 p.m. and runs two loops, one north through Cushman and one south toward South Amherst. Transportation director Owen Lachapelle said it carried an average of 108 students a day last year, most of them coming off athletics, drama or the homework center.

The rest is spread thin: $190,000 in curriculum materials pushed to next year, $124,000 from cutting two of the four district-wide professional development days, $71,000 in building supply accounts, and about $44,000 from not replacing three retiring paraprofessional hours at the elementary level. Superintendent Gregory Nnamdi said none of that touches class sizes this fall. Middle school sections stay at 22 to 24 students, which is where they were in June.

The late bus was the fight

Parent after parent came to the microphone about the bus, and the argument was mostly logistical rather than sentimental. Amherst athletics practice until 4:30. A family with one car and a 5 p.m. shift cannot get a seventh grader home from the middle school at 4:45.

"My daughter does cross country and I work in Holyoke," said Dolores Wyatt of Pomeroy Lane, who spoke ninth. "You are not cutting a bus. You are cutting cross country, for her and for maybe thirty other kids whose parents are also not standing in this room at 9 p.m. on a Monday."

Solberg said afterward that the committee asked the athletics department to look at whether practices could end at 4:00 so students catch the regular 4:10 activity run. Athletic director Pam Ruthers said she would have an answer by August 25, and that it will not work for anything that uses the far fields.

Two committee members, Hollis Bregman and Yvette Cardoza, voted against the package. Bregman wanted the bus funded out of the district's $1.9 million reserve, which would have left the reserve at about 2.1 percent of the operating budget. The state recommends five.

"I understand the math and I am voting no anyway," Bregman said. "Some things you keep because getting them back is harder than keeping them."

The teachers had a different complaint

Amherst Education Association president Carl Iyengar spoke near the end and spent most of his time on the math interventionist rather than the bus. The position was added in 2023 after two years of flat middle school math scores, and Iyengar said the district is now cutting the thing it added to fix a problem it still has.

"We hired that person for a reason and the reason did not go away," he said. "Next spring somebody at this table is going to be surprised by the numbers, and I want it in the minutes that nobody here should be."

Nnamdi did not disagree with him. He said the interventionist is the first position he would restore if the town comes back with money at the fall special town meeting, and that he has ranked all four openings in that order and will publish the list.

Dates to keep

Class lists go out on August 21 through the parent portal. Bus routes for the regular runs are posted the same day, and Lachapelle said families should check them even if nothing changed last year, because three stops on the Shutesbury Road loop moved.

School starts Monday, August 31. The homework center will still run until 4:45 at the middle school, but students in it will need a ride.

The committee meets again on Wednesday, September 9, at 6:30 p.m. in the middle school library, and the agenda includes a first look at the fiscal 2028 calendar. The fall special town meeting is set for October 20, which is the next real chance any of this money comes back.