So, why would I consider lowering the budget? Here are a few figures that are my basis for this. The total budget is $23,813,072. We have a student population of 1640. That amounts to $14,520.16 per student! It is costing us more to send a child to the Bow schools than to send a student to the NH Tech, with room and board!
As you well know the School Board is the only entity in town that can reduce a line item but here are a few ideas of where those reductions could be:
1) Reduce one 1st and one 2nd grade teacher
2) Reduce one Assistant Principal from the Elementary and Memorial School
3) Do not add the new Stipend positions – these include: Destination Imagination Coaches, Woodworking Club, NH First
Why reduce in the 1st and 2nd grade? The enrollment numbers show we can do this and still stay within the NH Department of Education guidelines of no more than 25 students in a classroom.
Same for the Assistant Principal, we have a rapidly declining enrollment in the Elementary school. We have highly qualified Principals in both the Elementary and Memorial School who can handle the operations at their given school. They can share the assistant between the schools.
The stipends are not necessary for co-curricular in the economy we are presently in. I am by no means discrediting these programs. They are valuable programs, but to have the taxpayers pay for them is just wrong. We started paying for these programs and the list is just increasing, yet there are programs that are staffed by teachers that are totally volunteer. Such as the Chess Club. How long until that club is also looking to pay a stipend to the teacher? Some of the Destination Imagination coaches are parents, so in reality we are paying our parents to be volunteers for their own children. My proposal would be to lower the budget by $400,000.
Looking at this in a macro sense, the school budget has historically been overestimated on the expense side and underestimated on the revenue side.
Here is an example: The Medicaid line in the revenue side is grossly underestimated. The 2007-08 estimate was $70,000 when the actual reimbursement was $136,786. The 2008-09 estimate was $70,000 we are still in this year so the actual figure is not yet available. But the estimate for the 2009-10 proposed is for $80,000??
On the expense side the Health Insurance budgeted figure was $2,928,132 and we saw a turn back of $311,804 a 9.62% overestimated figure! Yes this is great news – but keep the following in mind… This leaves a large undesignated fund balance at the end of the year. Did you know that all of the fund could be spent if the school board chose to? We can only control the bottom line. If we give them the money they have every right to spend it. And they do spend some of that money, that is what we call Christmas in June!
Bottom line and one thing to keep in mind at all times when the budget is mentioned. Increased spending equals higher taxes!!
In the Bunker,
Cindy Martin
Wow, your last article left us asking for more but this article will be hard to top. Your analysis of the underestimation of revenue and the over estimation of expenditures has finally got to get the people who idolize the school board finally thinking that they are being taken advantage of by the school board.
I can’t wait for Pansy to spin her way out of this one. Everyone’s truth detector alert should be on when she gets up and speaks.
PS please take a look at the excess in Kindergarten as potential cut as well.
An article in the Concord Monitor published a few months ago quoted the
chair of school board: “This $311,804 savings in health insurance fees would be returned to the Town. Well, the Town Manager, Jim Pitts, stated that he
had yet to see the money. I have not received a rebate check. . Has anyone
in town received one? The excuse given was that the money was tied up in
“paperwork somewhere.” This is a political answer that one would expect from Washington but not from our beloved elected officials. So I ask, where’s
the money?
I am not 100% sure what the law is, but I believe that any fund balance is returned at the end of the fiscal year. I would not think it would returned before that in case there was a catastrophic and unforseen expense, roof collapse, big special ed expenditure (i.e. a special needs child moves in to town that requires special services), lawsuit, etc. If that’s the case there’s $362 of the $400k you are looking for and we should be able to better that.
I think your other suggestions are reasonable. To me, I’d keep the two APs so that we stay within the state minimum standards. Those roles are important if we want administrators to be able to spend significant time on educational issues and not just day-to-day operations.
I think 25 is too high for a 1st or 2nd grade class, but I believe the actual number, for grade 2 anyway, would be quite a bit lower than 25 if 1 teacher were cut. I have not doen the math on grade 1. Keep in mind those state minimum numbers are not recommendations, they are the bottom line for adequacy. For the premium I paid for my house and in my tax bill, I want more than just adequate, and to date, the schools have delivered.
I agree with #3. Well said. I suspect, but have no specific examples, that there is more here as well.
I understand the frustration with the estmates, and you may be right that they should do better, but we don’t want them overestimating revenues. Its hard to make that up, especially as the year goes on and most expenses have already been committed. The state is not exactly a rock of stability we can hang our hats on when we make our estimates.
I also think the bottom line budget, allowing the district/board to transfer funds from line to line, works for taxpayers. Without that, they’d have to overesitmate everything. How would you estimate next years fuel bill right now if you knew you couldn’t cut back on food, gas, whatever to make up the difference if you guessed too low? You’d still have to heat the same area. You’d have to guess high. Eliminating that flexibility would really exacerbate the scenario described above where end-of-year balances could be Christmas in June.
I agree with ProtectingMyInvestment points with additional concern over number 3. Why not eliminate all stipends? I am assuming that since you are referring to new ones there are others already in place. If the argument against adding new ones is sound, then it should be applied to all. There may be contractural issues involved in grandfathered ones. However, with the new contract and future ones, we should seriously examine eliminating all of the stipends for co-curricular activities.
I’d also be in favor of looking at user-fees for co-curricular activities. Its not something that is going to save millions, and you’d have to make the number low enough to not discourage participation and be prepared to help families in need, but every penny helps.
I would also be in favor of freezing admin salries forthe year.
Add up all these things and we’re approacing $500 in reductions.
User fees are a good idea. After all, they would have tried to saddle you with up to $500K for IB programs, which could have entailed hiring writing coaches, IB coordinators, and the like, to serve just the ’smart’ kids. How could they justify that? All this is extra, with the test money coming from the pockets of the students.
I am liking the idea others have brought up to partner with another SAU to increase our economies of scale. I don’t know how to go about it, but are the Hooksett kids going to have to change schools in the near future anyway because Bedford has reduced enrollment so much at West?