Hampshire School is shedding 9% of staff in a significant restructuring of operations amid lower-than-expected enrollment progress for the upcoming educational 12 months, the establishment’s president confirmed Monday.
The transfer comes for an establishment typically cited as a turnaround mannequin amongst small faculties dealing with monetary misery.
Hampshire’s restructuring entails consolidating the school’s monetary support, enrollment, occasions and fundraising capabilities into a brand new division with the overarching title of “Institutional Help.”
The Massachusetts-based personal nonprofit can also be redistributing the obligations of its pupil affairs workplace throughout a number of items, together with educational affairs and its Justice, Fairness, and Antiracism division.
Hampshire’s leaders anticipate these strikes to eradicate about 29 positions and save $2.7 million yearly, school President Edward Wingenbach informed Increased Ed Dive in an interview Monday.
“We’re nonetheless rising, enrollment remains to be rising,” Wingenbach mentioned. “That is actually extra about making certain that we are able to proceed to achieve success because the parameters of that progress change.”
Senior leaders on the school will probably be taking a 13% pay lower as a part of the budget-saving effort, the Hampshire spokesperson mentioned.
The restructuring additionally comes on the heels of an introduced suspension of retirement contributions for fiscal 12 months 2025.
Decelerating progress
Most of the cuts, which have been introduced to campus Monday morning, are to administrative roles together with on the senior director stage, which can imply extra employees reporting to fewer division leaders. The faculty is asking division heads and vice presidents “to extend the quantity of hands-on engagement they’ve,” Wingenbach mentioned.
Conversations round potential consolidation and restructuring started earlier this 12 months because it turned clear Hampshire’s enrollment — whereas nonetheless rising 12 months over 12 months — would fall wanting targets.
The establishment has been rebuilding its enrollment and monetary standing since 2019, a precipitous 12 months for the school that introduced it close to the purpose of closure and led it to confess solely a partial incoming class that fall.
As we speak, Hampshire expects to welcome round 900 college students this fall, up from round 500 simply two years prior.
Nonetheless, final spring it turned clear to management that enrollment progress was going to fall wanting hopes. In April 2023, the school predicted 940 college students for fall 2024.
In explaining the missed enrollment marks, Wingenbach referenced this 12 months’s travails in larger ed with the Free Utility for Federal Scholar Support, noting that 38% of Hampshire’s college students are eligible for Pell Grants.
The U.S. Division of Schooling launched the FAFSA in late December, about three months later than standard, and the method has been beset by delays and technical glitches which have made it tough for some college students and their households to finish the shape.
Past any enrollment velocity bumps the FAFSA points could have wrought, Wingenbach mentioned that Hampshire is dedicated to balancing its price range by the 2026-27 educational 12 months. With enrollment progress slowing, leaders started trying on the expense facet of Hampshire’s price range to fulfill its monetary sustainability targets.
“I needed to sit down and say, ‘Okay, of all these attainable methods we’d rethink Hampshire in staffing and administrative structuring, that are those which can be most definitely to work?’” Wingenbach mentioned.
With the consolidation plan, the school tried to steadiness financial savings and a sustainable price range whereas holding onto the “glorious progress” on pupil retention and educational applications, in keeping with Wingenbach.
Leaders checked out the place they may have the ability to cut back complexity and forgo companies “in ways in which do not undermine the core values of the school,” Wingenbach mentioned. “We did not begin with, ‘How can we get to X quantity?’”
‘We should be sensible’
Because the rocky 12 months of 2019, Hampshire has undergone a significant curriculum transformation, changing conventional majors and departments with curricula targeted on addressing urgent world points corresponding to local weather change and racism.
The faculty has additionally raised greater than $43 million from donors. However, Wingenbach mentioned, Hampshire wants to have the ability to “stand on our personal two ft” — which means to get to a monetary place the place donors don’t must help working actions.
Whereas Hampshire’s enrollment has been rebounding from 2019 ranges, the school has continued to function within the pink. In fiscal 2023, it ran a whole working deficit of $3.4 million. That determine represented a greater than tenfold enhance from the prior 12 months, as a result of absence of almost $3.7 million in federal COVID-19 emergency funds that had infused help.
Even when the school’s outlook for enrollment progress accelerates within the subsequent 12 months or two, the slowdown could have continued ramifications due to this 12 months’s smaller-than-expected class measurement. Nonetheless, if progress picks up, that will imply the school can start investing in new areas once more.
“We’ve got to know we might be sustainable at 2026-27,” no matter whether or not enrollment begins to pattern again up within the brief time period, Wingenbach mentioned. “We’ve got to work with the information we now have. We should be sensible about our price range.”
However nonetheless, pointing to the school’s experimentation with curriculum and applications, Wingenbach emphasised the school’s continued ambition.
“Should you’re not bold as a small school, then you definately’re not going to achieve success,” Wingenbach mentioned. On the identical time, he famous that faculties of Hampshire’s measurement must watch out and considerate with their sources.
“What we’re doing proper now could be extremely tough, and it’s going to have an effect on lots of people,” he mentioned. “But it surely additionally ensures that we are going to proceed to be … this bold, experimenting establishment that I believe is such an vital instance for larger training.”
