TL;DR – Please come out to vote for a slate of progressive Greenfield School Committee candidates —Adrienne Craig-Williams, Elizabeth DeNeeve, and Jeffrey Diteman — in the preliminary election on September 9th from 7am-8pm at the Greenfield High School Gym 2 Barr Avenue! See the candidates’ own website, voteforbettergreenfieldschools.org, for more about their platform.

CLARIFICATION: Greenfield People’s Budget is an independent group, not affiliated with this slate of candidates. We are promoting their campaign because we believe they are the best candidates for our city and our schools. We are working to provide context for this election so that people know who all of the candidates are, since the Greenfield Recorder does not provide detailed reporting or investigation in its coverage.

Greenfield People’s Budget members have watched and transcribed 8 months of School Committee and City Council meetings, and we will be sharing out more quotes and facts to support the case we make below as soon as possible, but the preliminary election is coming up fast next week – one candidate will be knocked out, and we ask you to please make sure this whole slate makes it through to the general election. We at the People’s Budget believe these candidates are our best hope for ensuring strong schools and safe learning environments in these challenging times.

This was a difficult year for the Greenfield Public School system. GPS families and community members watched with concern as the mayor proposed a budget for GPS slightly less than the previous year, a full $1.3M short of level service funding. Parents, students, teachers, and other residents showed up at various school committee and city council meetings to express their support for GPS and Superintendent Patenaude and ask the Mayor and Council to fund our schools. Numerous male members of the City Council attacked Superintendent Patenaude, as well as the GPS business manager and School Committee members, with vitriol that frankly shocked many onlookers. At the end of the FY2026 Budget season, the schools were defunded, and the Superintendent, well loved by teachers and parents, had quit.

GPS has struggled to receive sufficient funding for many years. This is partly because state funding formulas fall short. It is also a result of Greenfield being a lower income city than many others in the state. During this budget cycle, Mayor Desorgher stated that “we need to cut school funding because enrollment is down”. Enrollment may be down due to an aging population, but it is also trending downward because families “choice out” of the district, a vote of no-confidence in part because of the regular attacks on school funding. Administrative costs at GPS are high, but that’s no different from other districts, and we have extra administrative cost burdens because 1) we have a lot of buildings, 2) GPS is working to turn around student performance and behavior issues that peaked earlier in the pandemic period, and 3) the state is requiring extra data and oversight. We’re left in a vicious cycle of underfunding and underenrollment which must be broken: we must invest in GPS to educate and care for our kids, retain our great staff, retain enrolled families and attract new ones. (The Superintendent and School Committee all agreed to consider creative solutions, but the Mayor did not engage them in dialogue, instead surprising everyone with her own last-minute, poorly-thought-out scheme to close the Middle School for this school year.)

Despite the limitations GPS has faced, our school committee has done great work in recent years. School Committee members Elizabeth DeNeeve, Stacey Sexton, and Kathryn Martini have attended numerous professional development trainings to bring best practices back to GPS, improving transparency, communication, budgeting, and more. They have worked extensively with committee members from other districts to lobby for more funding for schools in western MA. They and other members have been building meaningful systems for engagement with families, including parents of students with special needs and English language learners (including in the process of redistricting the schools, which the mayor sought to override).

This November, three 4-year School Committee seats will be on the ballot. Elizabeth DeNeeve is up for re-election. Among her long lists of accomplishments in the last 4 years is securing a $50K earmark for GPS and being named Massachusetts Association of School Committees “All State School Committee Member of the Year” in 2024. We need her dedication, creativity and problem solving skills in the years to come. We are excited and grateful that Adrienne Craig-Williams and Jeff Diteman have stepped up to run alongside Elizabeth. They are both dedicated educators who understand schools and have great ideas for improving school culture and performance.

This exciting slate of progressive candidates faces competitors that, if elected, will make GPS a worse place to learn and grow. Candidates Mike Terrounzo and Melodie Goodwin spoke repeatedly in favor of cutting GPS funding during this year’s budget season. They leveled unfounded and ill-informed allegations of corruption against school administrators, contributing to the atmosphere that led to Patenaude’s resignation as well as the withdrawal of all candidates’ applications for the position of school Business Manager. Terounzo relished telling the Superintendent she was responsible for any cuts imposed by the mayor and council, and Goodwin passionately urged the council to punish GPS and the rest of the School Committee with cuts. Superintendent Patenaude was subjected to hours and hours of mansplaining about how to manage modern school finances by city councilors with no relevant experience. Terounzo and Goodwin have also repeatedly exaggerated their treatment by others–claiming they were “bullied,” “harrassed,” or “interrogated” when video recordings of meetings show nothing of the sort–but they routinely dish out verbal abuse to others. Goodwin, along with candidate David Moscaritolo–chair of the Public Safety Commission and long-time defender of disgraced former Police Chief Robert Haigh–has insisted on reinstating School Resource Officers in GPS, a cash grab for the police department that pretends that police magically make people safe. Moscaritolo has been otherwise absent from conversations about the schools–except when he showed up at the May City Council meeting to urge councilors to vote against school funding, citing the same fast-and-loose allegations of fraud. Candidate Pamela Goodwin (no relation to Melodie) is likewise concerning given her comments about the schools. She speaks at every City Council and School Committee meeting. She suggested she agreed strongly with Melodie Goodwin, Mike Terounzo, and the mayor on their allegations regarding the school budget. She has claimed she is “hated because I am a Christian. And I’m probably hated because I refuse to say what my pronouns are.… I’m hated because I have a [Robert F.] Kennedy [Jr.] bumper sticker.”

We cannot have a School Committee which advocates for taking money away from the schools or drives away committed leaders while conducting witch hunts for non-existent fraud. We can’t have a committee that ignores or bullies residents about community priorities. We must choose candidates that will fund the district, protect our students, and uplift our community. We deserve strong schools in Greenfield, and we can elect a slate of candidates dedicated to that goal.

So for all those reasons, we urge you to please come out to vote for Craig-Williams, DeNeeve, and Diteman in the preliminary election on 9/9, and the general election on 11/4! See https://voteforbettergreenfieldschools.org for more about their slate and their platform and to find ways to volunteer.