By CHRIS FROST
Eagle Times News Editor
NEWPORT, NH — Disagreements, arguments, slight increases and a profound need for state aid highlighted recent budget discussions by the Newport school board.
The proposed school tax rate is $13.26, up $1.04 from 2022-2023’s rate, $12.73, showing a 4% increase.
Richards Elementary School, a Title 1 and CSI (Comprehensive Support and Improvement) school, had a 1.41% increase. Newport Middle School’s budget increased by 3.51% from 2022 to 2023. Newport High School increased by 1.86%. The CTE School increased by 7.32%.
During a school board retreat on Thursday, Jan. 11, the board discussed the budget which has a 55 cents per thousand impact on the property tax rate. If the public votes for the highest warrant article for the National Teacher Association (NTA) contract, an additional 50 cents per thousand will be added to the budget.
The proposed budget is $22.118 million, just $6,716 above the default, said Superintendent Donna Magoon, adding that they got it as close to the default as possible so that the schoolkids weren’t affected.
Board Member Bert Spaulding Sr. refused to vote on the budget, saying he has a life to live and called the condensed crammed budget unacceptable.
“It needs to happen in a reasonable time and reasonable way,” said Spaulding. “I will sit here and listen to this budget and not vote until we allow sufficient time to go through it in detail and explanations that we’ve all had so we can review and vote intelligently.”
Magoon said the board members received the budget book on Friday, Dec. 8.
“Board members had since Dec. 8 to review the budget and proposed cuts and requests,” she said. “When we came to the board meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 2, I had some board members say they wanted me to cut $885,953 from the budget. We cut $483,423, which put us $6,000 over default. I was told the other night that I should be ashamed of this budget. I am actually extremely pleased with this budget. I have our budget down to 1.8%, which is less than the COLA [cost of living adjustment], which is 3.2%. Last year, our budget was 6.4%, and the COLA was 8.7%. We managed to take the budget, look at the budget with input from our administration, and remove some of the items.”
She said the budget includes the support staff, and the negotiated contracts were $105,385 in the current budget.
At the high school, some things that went into the budget were a study hall monitor that was $36,000, the salaries for substitutes went up $35,000, health insurance went up $26,601 and FICA and Social Security went up $8,567.
“Retirement for teachers, their teacher contracts’ cost of living was $10,612, the salaries for co-curricular was negative $15,868, and that was because we moved those to CTE because they were all being billed out of the high school,” Magoon said.
Looking at the budget, she said the school district showed a $16,095 unjustified balance difference.
“It was the miscellaneous items,” Magoon said. “The non-contracted staff raises under $5,000, supplies were under $5,000, and health insurance, depending upon non-contracted employees and their health insurance, is under $5,000. There were other miscellaneous items under $5,000.”
Magoon said she reviewed the items they looked at and removed them with board members.
“We had from Tuesday night until Thursday night to prepare another book or another item,” she said. “When I asked the board how they would like this to be presented, I was told by two board members, Bert Spaulding Sr. and Mr. Darrell Jones, that they’d like to see it done by function. We worked on doing it all by function, and the other members said, either way, it doesn’t matter.”
She brought the function budget back by the following Tuesday and was told she wasn’t presenting a good budget because she didn’t bring all the school items in.
“I wasn’t asked to do it by school; I was asked to do it by function,” Magoon said. “If there is something the board feels I’m not doing correctly, a clear and concise way would be amazing. I’m doing the budget process the same way I did it last year.”
She was told not to do a public hearing presentation but planned to do a presentation with a PowerPoint presentation anyway.
“The public deserves to be looking at this,” Magoon said. “I think we’re doing a very good job. We’re looking at the things we’d have to remove from the budget to get it to where it is today. I talked about materials and curriculum, software, tech equipment, cutting raises to non-contracted staff, furniture, and equipment, and I talked about moving positions from Title 1 to CSI-to-CSI Grants. It’s all done, and everyone received the book.”
The School Board Budget vote is on Saturday, Feb. 3.
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