Significant cuts to programs, teachers, and facility improvements will need to be made within the ConVal Regional School District if this year’s proposed operating budget is voted down in March.
The default budget for the 2019-20 school year is almost $1.25 million less than the district’s proposed operating budget of $48.1 million, a disparity caused by some changes made to how a school district’s default budget is calculated.
“You can’t get this money by having people cut down on pencils and paper,” said school board member Niki McGettigan, who represents Temple. “We’re hoping that this lets people know the budget is real. It’s important that we talk about the loss of positions, and the other cuts.”
The ConVal School Board’s communication committee released a statement Wednesday morning that said the following programs would be cut to help meet the default budget: the Cornucopia Program, which teaches first and second grade students about gardening and nutrition; the New Hampshire Dance Institute (NHDI) program for elementary students; the fresh fruits and vegetable program at the elementary schools; summer programming at the middle and high schools; the Quest summer program; fifth block at the high school.
Boys’ and girls’ ice hockey, golf, the spirit team, and freshman boys’ basketball would also have to be cut, while Advanced Placement (AP) testing and Running Start classes would begin to require fees.
“This is a very scary thought to the board, to think of having to make it work,” said McGettigan, who chairs the communication committee.
Six-and-a-half positions at the middle and high school would be eliminated and important facility improvements would also be frozen to cut more money.
McGettigan said additional cuts would likely have to occur to get the district down to the default budget, should the operating budget be voted down.
“These are the ones we have agreed upon at this moment, things that wouldn’t affect the every day core curriculum,” McGettigan said. “This would not get us to where it needs to be, but it would get us closer.”
This year’s $48.1 million proposed operating budget has been called a “maintenance of efforts” by various members of the board and district and represents a 1.8 percent increase over the approved 2018-19 budget.
Employee benefits and professional services represent much of the budgetary increases in the 2019-20 budget, accounting for over $1 million of the increases.
“The increases don’t represent changes, they represent our obligations,” ConVal Superintendent Kimberly Saunders said during an interview earlier in the month. “We make some assumptions when we prepare the budget, the assumption here was maintenance of effort… to continue to fund the things we have funded in the past to meet obligations of students and staff.”
Changes to the process in creating the default budget have created a larger disparity between the proposed operating budget and the default budget this year. In past years, McGettigan said the difference between the two has been about $300,000 to $400,000.
A few bills passed in the state in 2018 have changed how a district’s default budget is formulated.
One of the big changes is new language that prevents salaries and benefits of positions eliminated in the proposed budget from appearing in the default budget.
With ConVal proposing this year that the high school’s dean of faculty position be eliminated in favor of an assistant principal at Great Brook School, the dean of faculty position cannot be placed in either budget under the new wording.
“In the past, we would have held onto the previous position,” McGettigan said. “Because we are exchanging them in the budget, you lose the original position either way.”
Another change specifies that contracts used to calculate the default budget can only be “contracts previously approved, in the amount so approved, by the legislative body in either the operating budget authorized for the previous year or in a separate warrant article for a previous year.”
Nicholas Handy can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 235 or nhandy@ledgertranscript.com.