LANGDON — The Fall Mountain School District’s proposed budget for the 2022-2023 school year seeks a sizable increase in district-wide spending, which administrators attributed primarily to roughly 5 percent to 6 percent cost hikes in instructional and support services.
Superintendent Lori Landry presented a proposed operating budget of $34,939,602 for next school year at a public hearing at Fall Mountain Regional High School on Wednesday. The proposal represents an increase of $1,825,020, or 5.5 percent from the current fiscal year.
For Charlestown, the largest community in the cooperative district, the proposed budget would have an additional tax impact of $3.06 per $1,000 of assessed property value, or the equivalent of an additional $459 in taxes on a $150,000 home.
According to Landry, the spending drivers include more than $591,000 in additional instructional compensation, mostly attributed to contractual teacher pay; more than a $600,000 increase in out-of-district tuition for students with special needs and other related services; and a $274,000 increase in the budget for heating fuel and similar operational needs.
“We all know that the cost of gasoline and heating fuel has gone up tremendously,” Landry said. “All of our supplies have gone up. We want to make sure that we have ample money that our district is going to need to have for next year.”
The presentation this year was noticeably different in regard to available documents and budget details, which may be largely attributable to the departure of former Chief Finance Officer James Fenn, who now serves as the finance director at Windsor Central Supervisory Union in Woodstock, Vermont.
The district’s slideshow presentation is currently the only budget document available to the public. While this presentation provides a broad overview of the proposal, the lack of many details – from the individual costs of identified “budget drivers” such as the teachers contract to changes to assessed town valuations and the decrease in the state education tax – are notably absent.
A representative from the supervisory union said on Thursday that administrators are in the process of uploading additional budget documents to the district website, which are expected to be available sometime next week.
School board member Shelly Andrus, from Charlestown, said the lack of budget details factored into her vote not to recommend the budget as presented.
“We have as much of a responsibility to the voters as we do to student achievement and moving this budget forward,” Andrus told the Eagle Times. “Without having all of the information and having full confidence in all the numbers, approving it seemed rushed. And at the end of the day, that was not something I felt comfortable doing.”
Andrus also said she has questions about the accuracy of the district’s reporting of state revenues, partially based on concerns raised on Wednesday by State Rep. Terry Spilsbury (R-Charlestown), who questioned whether the school district is correctly interpreting the state’s changes last year to the education funding formula
Last year the New Hampshire legislature approved a total reduction of $100 million in what New Hampshire communities must raise in Statewide Education Property Tax (SWEPT), a locally-raised tax that goes directly to the respective community’s local schools.
SWEPT is essentially a community’s local contribution to the statewide school funding system, commonly known as Adequate Education Aid.
The state deducts what a community raises in SWEPT money from what the state awards in Adequate Education grants.
According to Fall Mountain’s presentation, Charlestown is anticipated to have a total net reduction in state aid next year. While Charlestown’s adequate education aid is projected to increase by $159,359, Charlestown’s SWEPT contribution is expected to decrease by $164,467, resulting in a net reduction of $5,801.
But Spilsbury told administrators that this may be an incorrect interpretation, saying that the state intends to fund that $100 million from other sources.
“They are substituting that $100 million from other state sources to make up that difference,” Spilsbury said. “But the revenue amount that will be available to the school district and each participating town is unchanged.”
District administrators said they will inquire into the state’s funding intent.
Also important is that a reduction in SWEPT revenues correlates with a reduction in local taxes. A school district seeking to recoup that revenue loss would likely need to raise the amount in taxes. For this reason, many school business administrators say they do not factor SWEPT as heavily into their revenue impacts since changes in the amount of SWEPT typically offset.
School board member Alissa Bascom, also from Charlestown, said she voted to recommend the budget despite still having concerns about the district’s overall spending trends. To Bascom, those concerns require much longer conversations and strategic planning than what can be addressed in the current budget at this point.
“It is the budget we need right now to fund what we have,” Bascom said. “To cut further would require a cut in positions and to cut positions without thoughtful, adequate plans for the children and the parents affected is not the right way to go. I say this while recognizing that the continued increase in the bottom line needs to be addressed and work must begin earlier in the budget season.”
The district’s budget deliberative session is scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 2, at 6:30 p.m. at Fall Mountain Regional High School.
reporter @eagletimes.com
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