The Mark's Meadow Elementary School, a legacy of an earlier time when UMass had an elementary teacher certification program, may be closed next fall.  Current projections are that Amherst can only afford a 2-3% budget increase, but that teacher pay raises, increased insurance costs and other expenses will put the school budget somewhere in the neighborhood of a million dollars beyond this, thus creating a deficit.  27% of the parents sending children to the Mark's Meadow school are UMass students.

Two options have been proposed.  The first involves the virtual elimination of almost all curricular enhancements town-wide, including the elimination of a very popular music program.  The other involves closing the Mark's Meadow school, consolidating the elementary grades into the other three schools in town.  Advocates of doing this also cite the discriminatory nature of the school districts which have essentially ghettoized all of the low income and minority students into two schools, with the wealthy white kids largely going to the other two.