The Wilton-Lyndeborough Cooperative School Board has assigned a committee to tackle the district’s approved budget – about $411,000 less than what the district originally proposed. While the process has been left largely in the sub-committee’s hands, the board did nay-say at least one money-saving measure: Closing Lyndeborough Central School.
On Tuesday, the entirety of the public discussion was taken up by residents expressing concerns about a list of proposed cuts, suggested by Superintendent Bryan Lane, to bring the budget down to the number accepted by district meeting earlier this month. Some of the changes proposed would have big impacts, such as closing the Lyndeborough Central School and moving the pre-school and kindergarten classes to other schools, reducing teachers, and eliminating the middle school sports program, making the superintendent or response-to-instruction coordinator part-time among others.
It was these changes, while providing the biggest savings, that residents and members of the school board both showed the most hesitation over.
Newly elected Chair Alex Loverme said Lyndeborough residents would “lose their identity” if LCS closed, something that had been expressed as a fear when the elementary students moved to Florence Rideout Elementary.
Student Kelsey Crouse of Lyndeborough, a student at the middle school, spoke about her passion for sports and pleaded with the district not to eliminate the sports program for the middle school, saying she had found her own group of friends through sports.
“Lots of kids have found a best friend from being on a team with them,” she said. She also spoke of the need for kids to be active, find passions, and build skills for entering high school teams.
Harry Dailey of Wilton asked the board to be aware of making permanent changes with long-term impacts, suggesting this year may be a “one-year anomaly.”
“Closing LCS at this time is a huge mistake,” Dailey said. “We spent more than half a million dollars to bring that building up to what it is today.”
School Board member Carol Leblanc said she could not get behind any proposal that would eliminate teachers. “That shouldn’t even be on the plate,” she said.
Other suggested changes were to eliminate an alternative educator teacher, a role which supervises students involved in online learning as well as an in-school suspension for a savings of $28,826, eliminating field trips for a savings of $24,512, eliminating planned additional staffing for the business office for a savings of $20,439, eliminating band and destination imagination from Florence Rideout, and eliminating the web-master position, reducing contingencies in the budget for changes in health care plans, and reduce the district’s contributions of the health and dental plans for certain employees.
The School Board met Tuesday in order to take some action, as the district must submit its budget to the department of revenue within 20 days of passing its budget. The School Board was not scheduled to meet again until after that deadline had passed, and needed to make a decision about how to proceed.
Lane told the board one option was to adjust the line item for general education by the total amount reduced at the District Meeting, and make decisions about where those cuts would come from at a later date. Ultimately, this was the path the board took, nominating a temporary finance committee consisting of board members Charlie Post, Brianne Lavallee, Mark Legere and Jonathan Vanderhoof to review the budget and bring recommendations to the board.
The board did, however, take at least one straw poll to give direction to the committee, on the issue of whether or not to close Lyndeborough Central School. The majority of the board agreed they would not support a full closure of the building, but said they would be open to other reductions at the school, if the committee found them appropriate.
The final decision on the budget will have to be made by the entire school board.
Ashley Saari can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.