SAD 4/RSU 80 budget still not ‘right’

To the Editor;

Here it is October and the school board has just rolled out version 4 of a budget that should have been settled before July 1, and that has failed at public vote 3 times. The superintendent introduced this latest effort by saying this version had been done “right.” So, let’s look at the changes and figure out what has happened this time.

First of all, the school board has finally discovered that it has fund balance, despite repeated statements by the administration all winter and spring that there was none. The undiscovered, unallocated, unaudited amount is now listed as about a quarter of a million dollars. Surprise, surprise!

In the first presented version of this fourth permutation, the administration offered up $100,000 and the committee opted to increase it by an additional +$50K to reduce the assessments to the towns by a net zero total. Good news! (We all need to be cautious that we understand fund balance. It is an annual on-paper accounting figure and does not equate with cash in the bank on a given day. Once used, it is gone, so it must be used thoughtfully. However its late discovery can help the current dilemma of soaking the taxpayer to the point of ruin. The fix is temporary and should not be viewed as a long-term solution.)

The final version of the fourth effort is showing the use of over $160K of fund balance, up about $10K from the discussed efforts. That makes me worry about the accuracy of the budgeting figures in general.

The use of the fund balance had a very important impact on relieving the revenue side of the budget; however one would reasonably expect to see a significant decrease in budgeted expenditures. That is not nearly as clear or potentially successful.

Here is the superintendent’s and school board’s interpretation of “right.” Since the director of testing and curriculum had resigned in September, someone saw the unlikely possibility of hiring late in the year a half-time replacement and cut the position completely. They then used the freed-up budgeted money allocation to create another administrative position. This latest is a full-time position that is part vice-principal and part activities/athletic director to be shared throughout the system (A 60/40 percent split).

The board debated whether to create the position before the latest budget passed and decided not to wait to implement the position, an ill-considered decision in the writer’s opinion financially, given the failure of three previous attempts.

Additionally the board approved a 2 percent (Beware of percentages; the higher the base upon which it is calculated, obviously the higher the actual dollars given.) raise for all those designated administrators, except for the elementary principal to whom was given a 10 percent increase in salary. The rationale is that the elementary position was at the bottom, salary-wise, when compared to the regional and state comparables.

Now, I know it seems simple to most, but in an averaging calculation, half the included are on the underside of the average figure. Usually one uses other criteria to see why this has occurred. One consideration is experience. The average for the group was eight years; this is the first full-time principalship for the district’s elementary principal and is just a couple of years in duration. One should not walk into a job at a stated financial level without factoring that in. Presumably the principal had personal aspirations and this suited her as an opportunity to get a professional foot-in-the door at the salary offered. It’s done all the time, but don’t expect to use such an option and then expect an immediate increase in salary to meet an experienced average, especially since the accompanying benefits package was listed as second in the list, well above average.

Lastly, the administration will start the budget (in its finally-passed state) process for FY2018 using the previous year’s budget as a base. You, therefore, will absorb all this uncurbed and fattened expenses as a given. The board should be forced instead to use a zero-based budget-building model and do its homework more specifically and assiduously early on. You will be voting on this budget in November at the same time as the national election and a bunch of serious referendum issues.

Go to the budget meeting and make yourself heard before the written vote. More importantly, go to your voting polls and vote “No” on this budget once again, because neither the administration nor the school committee yet has it “right.”

Ann Bridge
Parkman