HUBBARDSTON — The town has approved this year’s fiscal 2020 school budget for $4,693,549, leaving a gap from what the Quabbin Regional School District requested.

 Quabbin recommended a budget for Hubbardston at about $4,852,039 and was about an eight percent increase from last year,  Hubbardston officials say that figure would greatly harm the town. Increases in the budget come from transportation costs, which for the school itself went up 12 percent over the last year, according to Regional School Committee member Mark Wigler. Hubbardston in particular, is being hit hard is due to the formula which the school calculates the cost for each town.

“The proposed budget from the school is so much higher than the overall increase because you look at the overall budget, you see they are asking for an increase of under 3 percent overall,” Hubbardston Finance Committee Chairwoman Susan Rayne said. “Because the formula used to calculate member town’s contributions,  increases year to year can swing dramatically, as they did this year for Hubbardston, and this has happened for other towns, too.”

The amount a town has to pay is in part due to enrollment, but also because of a number of other variables, including the resident income and property valuation. Hubbardston was the most recent town to have their valuation done, and consequently, they were hit with a higher number than expected. Rayne notes that other towns in the school district have faced this in the past.

“We want to get other towns on board to revise the district agreement to the formula by which these assessments are calculated,” Rayne said. “What we recommended was that the selectmen take this up with member towns.”

Still, the overall budget increase of the school is not particularly high, sitting at exactly 2.8 percent.

“We are trying to keep our services good, but at a 2.8 increase it’s tough to do that ... the situation is Hubbardston is unique,” Wigler said.

Aside from changing the formula, the hope is when the state Senate passes the budget with school funding, the school will receive enough funds to close that gap. Worst-case scenario would be that negotiations cannot be made and the state will decide the budget for them.

"Quabbin school budget has to be reworked. The current ask would cripple the town’s operations and would mean positions would have to be eliminated and people would be losing their jobs,” selectmen Chairman Dan Galante said.

“The district serves us and our kids,” Rayne said. “We want it to succeed. We want to fund it, we want to do well for the kids and the other kids who come in to attend, but we as a member town, we can’t absorb these unpredictable swings. We were able to go up almost five percent with no additional ask. If we had predictability going forward, we could see the increase and its effects and we can plan for that.”

The budget will be voted on at Town Meeting June 4 at 7 p.m. in the Hubbardston Center School gym, but hope still remains that the state budget would fill in the gap between the town’s approved budget and the school’s requested budget.