Mascenic School District officials are trying to map out a third year operating under a default budget after voters recently turned down a budget increase.
On Monday, the School Board signed the form to submit to the state to make the district’s default budget the official one for the coming year.
Voters in the district rejected the district’s proposed $23.9 million budget at the polls on March 11, putting the default budget of $23.4 million in place. Greenville voters supported the proposal, 135-92. However, New Ipswich voters opposed it decisively, 981-623, resulting in the budget’s defeat.
Prior to the vote, the district administration proposed that a year under another default would include staff reductions at the elementary and middle school levels, elimination of middle school sports and extracurricular activities, and elimination of nonrequired preschool programming.
Superintendent Liz Pogorzelski said discussions are beginning to see what the realities of those changes would be.
On Monday, she reported to the School Board that earlier that day she met with the New Ipswich Parks and Recreation Department to discuss programs that might be available to students who would otherwise be involved in middle school athletics.
The conversations covered “how that’s going to work, and what sports that’s going to work in,” she said.
Another option for sports is for students in seventh and eighth grade “playing up” at the varsity or junior varsity level at the high school. She said the district will be sending out surveys to parents in the coming weeks to determine interest in that option. She said some high school teams don’t have a junior varsity option and the district will know more about the possibilities for younger athletes as those teams get closer to their season.
The district’s preschool program is another area for potential cuts. While the district is required to provide special education services to preschool students, that has typically been done as part of a full-day program that also included general education students. The proposal is to reduce the program to provide required services for 3-year-old preschoolers.
Pogorzelski said conversations are starting to determine what that will look like.
She said the district is also “having discussions, empathetically, compassionately” with staff over the next couple of weeks.
Proposed staffing cuts included the elimination of a third-grade and a middle school teaching position.
The possibility of staffing cuts is compounded, Pogorzelski said, by the fact that in addition to not passing the budget, the district voters also rejected a collective bargaining agreement with the district’s paraprofessional staff and an article that would have allowed the district to renegotiate the agreement and hold a special meeting on that issue.
“We have some very significant concerns with the para contract not passing,” she said, namely that staff could leave the district. “Which puts us in a bind both fiscally and legally. We’re legally required to provide certain services to students per their [Individual Education Plans], and sometimes that includes paraprofessionals.”
Pogorzelski said when the district is unable to hire for those positions, the services must still be provided by law, which requires contracted personnel.
“It costs the district more money to do that,” she said.
The School Board did not act on the proposed cuts during Monday’s meeting, and School Board member Ellen Salmonson asked for a more complete breakdown of the costs associated with each potential cut for further review.