State funding cuts for adequacy aid are likely to put a burden on taxpayers in local school districts next year.
Mascenic School District’s draft budget currently represents a less than 1 percent increase. The School Board has not taken a vote on its proposed budget this year, intending to review the budget and vote on a final number during its next School Board meeting, but last Monday, the board received a recommendation from its Budget Advisory Committee to support a budget of $19.25 million, or a $65,820 increase from the previous year.
“As a needs-based budget, there is no fluff,” said Budget Advisory Committee member Mitchell Gluck told the board.
The advisory committee reviews the budget and presents recommendations to the School Board, but the ultimate decision on what budget to put forth to the voters in March lies with the School Board.
While the increase in the budget recommended by the advisory committee was less than a .4 percent increase from last year’s budget, some members of the School Board said the district could be facing a steep decrease in funding.
Particularly hard hit was the school’s adequacy aid. Adequacy aid is provided to schools from the state based on their student enrollment, which is down in the Mascenic School District this year, in part because of the decision of some parents to home school this year, rather than attend school in a partially remote hybrid scenario due to the COVID-19 virus.
The difference in state funding is about $1.7 million for Mascenic, with the largest portion of the difference accounted for by a $1.1 million one-time grant the district received last year. However, the district is also seeing sharp reductions in adequacy aid, with about 142 fewer students enrolled in the district compared to the previous year. The state is projected to provide district’s about $3,786 per student in adequacy aid, and with the student reduction, Mascenic is seeing reductions there, too.
“It’s a perfect storm,” said Superintendent Christine Martin.
Superintendents across the state are supporting a measure in the legislature that would require the state to fund schools based on last year’s average daily membership, recognizing that many of the students that have withdrawn did so because of COVID-19.
“We need help,” Martin said.
Since adequacy aid is based on student population, if those students return to public education next year, the funding will return as well, but the board discussed the fact that there is no way to know how many of those students will return to the district.
“It’s up in the air,” said School Board member Tom Falter.
School Board member Rachel Anderson said towns could see tax increases as high as 13 percent for both Greenville and New Ipswich.
“I don’t necessarily share the optimism that we’ll be back to the student levels pre-COVID next year,” Anderson said. “Can we really let the towns absorb that kind of cost?”
Anderson said at the upcoming School Board meeting, the district needed to look hard at the budget, including possible staff cuts.
Martin told the board that she did not advocate for any staff reductions, but would provide them with some scenarios for their upcoming meeting, if the board wished to review the option.
“Is is possible to reduce staff? It always is,” Martin said. “But there is always impacts, and it’s usually programming or class size.”
School Board member Julie Lampinen said the board should at least look at the impact and options.
“If it can’t be done, it can’t be done, but we need to do our due diligence and explore all options,” she said.
Other school districts are facing similar budget shortfalls due to dropping student population.
In the Jaffrey-Rindge Cooperative, 163 children registered for a homeschool program for the 2020-2021 school year, 147 of which had previously been enrolled in schools within the district. That compares to 30 children who were homeschooled in the district the previous year.
Adequacy aid is expected to drop by about $358,239 for Jaffrey and $611,713 for Rindge, based on those student enrollments.
“We are already in the midst of our budgeting process for the 2021-22 school year. Adequacy aid and potentially having less students next year are both major factors that were taken into consideration when we put together our draft budget,” said district Communications Coordinator Nicholas Handy. “We do anticipate that at least some of our homeschool population will return to the district after the COVID-19 pandemic is over.”
The Jaffrey-Rindge School District has trimmed about $415,66 from its first draft of the budget, mainly in the areas of staffing and student services. The district’s budget is currently proposed at $26.77 million, which is about $377,530 below the default budget of $27.14 million.
“What we don’t want to do when looking at our budget is halting the educational progress we are making,” Handy said. “We looked at staffing and while we have made some adjustments, we have not cut any staff.”
The ConVal School District also saw students pull out of the district this year with more than 100 electing to homeschool and about 50 pulling out to attend a private, charter or other public schools – about 6 percent of the total student population, according to ConVal Superintendent Kimberly Rizzo Saunders. Some of those students did return to the district, and the district saw its most robust kindergarten enrollment in years, Saunders said, but adequacy aid for the district is still expected to drop significantly, by about $345,000.
Other districts in the region said they were not hit as hard.
Mason School District is expecting about $20,000 less in adequacy aid from the state for the coming year, Superintendent Kristen Kivela said. However, that is not out of line with previous years based on student fluctuation. Last year, the Mason School District received about $30,000 less than the year before. She said the district didn’t see a large number of additional home schooling students this year.
In the Wilton-Lyndeborough Cooperative, Superintendent Bryan Lane said 12 new students withdrew from the district for homeschooling this year, some who explicitly referenced the virus as their reason for doing so. That’s about twice the number that notified the district they would be homeschooling the previous year. Lane said he expects at least some of those students to return to public school after the crisis has subsided.
However, while more students elected to homeschool this year, Lane said overall, student enrollment in the district is actually higher than it was last year, by a total of 13 students, and the district’s adequacy funding isn’t going to be taking a hit.
The Mascenic district was expected to vote on a final budget proposal on Monday, and is scheduled to present the budget in a remote hearing on Jan. 4, followed by a district Town Hall, where residents can ask questions and give feedback to the district.
Ashley Saari can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.