The Jaffrey-Rindge School District grappled this year with how to approach a deep cut to its proposed budget, which was reduced by $3 million during the deliberative session.
The original budget put forth by the School Board was $33.76 million, but after the cut, the majority of board members advocated a no vote, which would put the district’s default budget into place. The default budget would have been $33.86 million – above the district’s original proposal.
On March 11, voters in the district approved the cut budget, 1,623 to 1,470. Jaffrey voters supported the default budget, with 788 votes against the cut budget and 612 for it. Rindge voters supported the cut budget 1,011 to 682, and overwhelmed the gap in the Jaffrey votes.
The district now faced reworking the budget, down roughly $1.1 million, or 3.46 percent, from the previous year.
The board originally proposed a slate of cuts to meet the reduced budget that would have impacted 24 1/2 jobs, eliminating universal pre-school and reverting back to a half-day lottery system, reducing cocurriculars, eliminating athletics and delaying purchase of materials and maintenance, among other items.
The School Board originally agreed to that slate of cuts, but after community feedback and reviewing the amount of funds in its unreserved fund balance, decided to use those funds to ensure some of those positions and programs were funded for this school year.
Universal preschool, athletics, cocurricular activities, a middle school music teacher and a high school French teacher were restored to the budget after the Jaffrey-Rindge School Board agreed to use $1.1 million in end-of-year funds to prevent some planned cuts.
Following a public hearing in August, the board unanimously approved using $1,126,245 of the unreserved funds for the positions and programs, but acknowledged that the solution was a “one-year fix.”
“As a number of you have said, we’ve got a long-term problem here and we need to be ready to address it in the budget season, which for us starts in November, but also all through the coming months before the March vote,” said School Board member John McCarthy during August’s public hearing to approve the use of the funds.