Budget Cuts Are Bad News For Teachers

Details: Created on Friday, 05 April 2013 14:31; Written by Joseph Peters

budget cuts WELLS RIVER - After two failed attempts to pass a school budget, the Blue Mountain Union school board is under the gun, trying to have a third draft of the budget ready for vote on April 24. The first two budgets were deemed too expensive for voters, which means that teachers will likely lose their jobs as the board attempts to create a budget that can win voter approval.

Lynn Lord, the president of BMU's teachers association, is one of the voices against cutting teachers.

"We don't want personnel cut," Lord said. "We don't want programs cut, including sports, extracurricular, academics, whatever. We have a very, very good school here. And it costs money to support a good school."

Unfortunately, voters weren't willing to give BMU the money that the school initially asked for. The budget the school presented on town meeting day - March 5 - was for just north of $8.2 million, a nearly 15% increase over last year's budget. When that budget was voted down, the board presented a second budget, which clocked in at about $7.9 million. That figure was still 10% higher than last year's budget. That budget was voted down, too.

Those budget numbers don't include the $352,000 deficit that the school has racked up from 2010-2012. According to a BMU voter's guide distributed in the school's annual report, "By law the deficit cannot appear on the school district's warning, but taxpayers need to know that they will be paying to eliminate that deficit through their taxes. Once the district approves a budget, the deficit will be added to that amount." That deficit was among the hot-button issues at BMU's public school board meeting on April 3.

"At the last hearing," said BMU's superintendent, Richard Pike, in an email, "we asked those in attendance if they would entertain an article to borrow money to eliminate the deficit over a three-year period. There was no support for this approach. The consensus was to deal with it now and not incur additional interest expenses associated with the borrowing."

Dealing with past deficits, however, will not change the fact that the school is headed for another deficit this year. "The board has been very candid about the fact that there will be a deficit at the end of this fiscal year," Pike said in the same email. "The exact amount will not be determined until the school audit is completed this summer."

Pike is right that the actual amount of the deficit won't be officially known until the audit is complete, but documents released by the school district at a March 25 hearing indicate that the general fund could be as much as $600,000 higher than the approved budget. That's a result of departments across the board overspending their budget. Special education expenses were over $300,000 higher than anticipated; regular education was no different, spending over $100,000 more than anticipated.

Fingers can be pointed in any number of directions. Is it the board's fault, not asking for enough money? Is it the voters, who may not have approved a more realistic budget? Is it school administration, for not keeping better control of the purse strings? That topic could be debated for weeks. What's clear is that members of BMU's faculty and staff will be the ones losing their jobs. In the cuts made to the town meeting day budget, the school board eliminated a middle school humanities teacher. They also cut the foreign language teacher from full-time to half-time. That's just the first round of cuts. As the board attempts to shave more money from the school budget, it's clear that more positions will be lost.

"I anticipate that all cuts [from the second draft of the budget] will remain," Pike said in his email. "Our charge will be to find additional cuts... The challenge will be finding cuts that have the least impact on programs."

As the teachers association president, part of Lord's job is helping those who could soon be out of work. "It's a very difficult situation," Lord said. "We're trying to help prop those folks up who it will affect directly. They know who they are."

Taryn Christie, a senior at Blue Mountain, has already been accepted to multiple colleges in the region. She decided to attend Plymouth State University, and she credits the education she got at BMU with helping her get there.

"I know from experience that every single teacher that I've had has gone the extra mile," Christie said. "I'm not the star, academically, so sometimes I do need extra help in math, or in reading, or some other aspect of school, and every teacher that I've had has been willing to do that."

Perhaps most affected are parents like Guy Vestal. Vestal has eight daughters in all. Two have graduated from Blue Mountain, four are currently enrolled there, and two more will be going when they're old enough. Vestal voted yes on both drafts of the budget, and he expressed disappointment that the rest of the town didn't see things from his perspective.

"A lot of people in town are like, 'Those greedy teachers, they want a raise,'" Vestal said. "But when you walk through BMU's parking lot and look at the teachers' cars, they drive the same broken-down vehicles that I do."

"It would be nice if [the school board] would just stand up and say, 'Look, we completely screwed up,'" Vestal continued. "'It's all our fault. If you don't want to vote for us next year, don't vote. Here's the absolute truth. If you wanna save this school, if you wanna save these kids, if you wanna try and rescue all of the things that we have screwed up, here's the actual truth.'"

The truth Vestal alludes to may not be a pretty one. Taxpayers have already said, via their votes, that they won't support an $8 million dollar budget, but, as Lord said, schools aren't cheap. The board's next budget will likely be released on April 17, and a public hearing about that budget will take place on April 22. Men and women like Vestal can hope for a town-wide change of heart, but that seems unlikely. What's likely is that, when all is said and done, teachers will lose their jobs. For Lynn Lord, something about that doesn't seem right.

"To just let them go," Lord said, "like they haven't mattered at all, or they haven't contributed, without any real appreciation of what they have contributed? It's just wrong. It's just not okay."