GREENFIELD — Returning to budget talks following May’s City Council meeting, the School Committee voted Wednesday to approve a level-funded fiscal year 2026 budget, reflecting roughly $1.89 million in cuts from the original proposal that was submitted to the mayor earlier this year.

The cuts include $612,666 from the committee’s former redistricting plan, along with administrative and transportation positions across the district.

Superintendent Karin Patenaude’s recommended $23.7 million budget for fiscal year 2026 was approved as presented. However, the School Committee also decided to further direct the administration to pursue all appropriate avenues of funding to support keeping the nurse leader position, including but not limited to grants, municipal allocations, and available state or federal resources.

“I’ll just say this is devastating. I mean, it’s really hard to look at this plan; it’s not a good plan,” School Committee Chair Glenn Johnson-Mussad said. “It’s the best plan possible under the budget conditions, but I really think that the combination of the insurance situation causing so much havoc with budgets all over the place, as well as the particular number that the mayor put forward and the City Council’s decision not to meet our $350,000 request, that could have really helped with some of this.”

City Council voted in May to approve the mayor’s approximately $23.7 million school budget, voting down Patenaude’s requested $1.89 million increase and the School Committee’s subsequent request for a $350,000 increase.

The vote came after Mayor Ginny Desorgher sent an email to all municipal departments in November, requesting that they draft level-funded budgets amid rising insurance costs and uncertain state and federal funding.

Patenaude, who is resigning July 3, presented the School Department’s budget and explained the various cuts made to reduce it.

After cutting $612,666 associated with the School Committee’s paused plan to redistrict (redrawing the district’s lines to determine which students attend which elementary schools), Patenaude said she addressed City Council’s previous assertion that the department has been too “top-heavy” with its funding. She announced that she cut four administrative positions — the Greenfield Middle School assistant principal, nurse leader, network administrator and director of behavioral services — thus saving an additional $369,055.

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Patenaude added that she also made cuts to transportation positions in an effort to avoid eliminating roles that most directly impact students’ education.

“By no means do I think any of these positions should not be at the school, but we had to make cuts somewhere due to the increased budget deficit,” Patenaude said. “We looked at other departments because we’re trying to cut those things that are not student-facing and really want to keep those positions that support our students. We ended up cutting our second district-wide maintenance worker, a CDL driver from transportation and we reduced the 7D [van] driver line.”

Even with these cuts, Patenaude explained the district chose to pull $765,228 from its savings to offset the budget deficit. She said that while she could have cut teaching and library positions, they were too important to remove.

“We had three other positions in our teaching staff that could have been on the chopping block, but we chose to use savings to preserve those,” Patenaude said. “They were counselors and our librarian. With our focus on literacy and our social-emotional needs, the district did not feel that that was the best cut to absorb this year, and we needed to keep them in the budget.”

Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at acammalleri@recorder.com or 413-930-4429.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly described a School Committee motion regarding funding to retain the nurse leader position. Superintendent Karin Patenaude’s recommended $23.7 million budget for fiscal year 2026 was approved as presented. However, the committee also decided to further direct the administration to pursue all appropriate avenues of funding to support keeping the nurse leader position, including but not limited to grants, municipal allocations, and available state or federal resources.