By Patrick Adrian
EAGLE TIMES STAFF
CLAREMONT — The Claremont School District is proposing a reduced operating budget next school year with $541,581 in total reductions, including a $312,272 decrease in contractual expenses and a nearly 17 percent reduction in the Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center (SRVRTC) budget.
The Claremont School Board unanimously approved on Wednesday a proposed operating budget of $37,243,825 for the 2022-2023 school year, with $16,305,917 to be raised by taxes.
The proposal would reduce the Claremont tax rate by an estimated $1.68 per $1,000 of assessed property value or $1.38 per $1,000 if approved with the warrant articles.
The budget proposal is equal in amount to the default budget, which is determined by adding next year’s contractual obligations to the current year’s budget amount.
Claremont School Board Chair Frank Sprague said the board’s goal was to develop “the most efficient budget possible.”
“We are trying to be sure that we are spending money in the best, most efficient way that we can,” Sprague told the Eagle Times. “Our duty is to find the right balance between the best interests of kids and the best interests of the taxpayers.”
The board’s attention to streamlining the district’s spending took a more formal direction four years ago with the formation of a three-member budget committee, whose task is to meticulously study the district’s operating costs for redundancies or opportunities to provide services more effectively or efficiently.
In regard to the proposal’s $312,272 in contractual reductions, Sprague said these reflect district-wide service contracts or positions that fall outside of the district’s collective bargaining groups, such as specialized service contractors.
The proposal also significantly reduces the budget of the Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center by $181,236, or 16.93 percent of the center’s current budget.
The cuts to the career-technical education center include reducing both the director and adult education coordinator positions from full-time to part-time.
Under the plan, the director would absorb the responsibilities of the adult education coordinator to enable the director to remain a full-time employee, albeit at a significantly reduced cost to the district.
Sprague said that he recalled Claremont’s previous technical education director saying that one director could run both the Claremont and Newport campuses, which indicated to Sprague that Claremont’s position does not need to be full-time.
Unlike the Newport campus, which has eight vocational programs and is actively looking to add more, the Claremont campus’ offerings have continued to shrink over the years.
Sprague attributes the difference greatly to building configuration. Because Newport’s vocation school, middle and high schools share a single building, Newport students can more easily access Newport’s vocational programs in their schedule. In Claremont, Stevens High School and the tech-ed center are on separate campuses, located a few blocks from one another.
Sprague said that it did not make fiscal sense to fund a full-time administrator of a school with only four programs similarly to a school principal who oversees numerous employees and departments.
Yet these reductions at the tech-ed center also reflect the district’s broader change in direction regarding career-technical education opportunities, Sprague said.
Sprague said the district still intends to offer vocational programs to its students, though the district could partner with community partners like River Valley Community College to provide those opportunities.
Other cuts at the Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center include the removal of three positions: a nurse, a guidance counselor, and the business program instructor, a position that is currently vacant.
The nurse at Claremont Middle School will also serve students at the tech-ed center.
Other notable district savings include a reduction of $454,322 in the Stevens High School budget. District Finance Director Richard Stevens said this reduction is entirely tied to savings in out of district tuition for students with specialized needs.
Notably next year’s budget projects a total revenue increase of $620,746, largely attributable to an increase in state adequate education aid.
While school boards often respond to revenue increases by increasing the district’s spending, Sprague said that board members want to resist the habit of spending money “just because it is there” and limit spending to what actually needs to be spent.
In fact, next year’s revenue increase provided even more rationale to reduce the district’s tax impact, because revenue sources like state aid in New Hampshire is known to fluctuate dramatically, Sprague explained. Theoretically if the school district level-funds this budget according to having additional revenue this year, next year the district could face a tax hike should that revenue shrink.
The Claremont School Board will hold a public hearing on the budget proposal on Tuesday, Jan. 18, at 6:30 p.m at the Sugar River Valley Regional Technical Center.
The presentation will also include an introduction to four separate warrant articles, each pertaining to a new collective bargaining agreement. The bargaining groups include the district’s secretaries, paraprofessionals, maintenance and transportation union and building principals and directors.
reporter @eagletimes.com
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