School-board chair outlines reductions and kept positions in budget; proposed budget remains slightly above default
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Summary
Lori Peters, school-board chair, summarized cuts the board made and the items retained in the recommended budget, including one gifted-and-talented FTE, a reduced-hours math interventionist, and the registrar position; Peters said the kept lines left the budget about $5,900 over default and authorized administration to reallocate lines to cover the shortfall.
Lori Peters, chair of the Merrimack School Board, presented the board's recommended reductions and the positions and programs that the board chose to keep in the proposed budget.
Peters said the board retained one gifted-and-talented full-time equivalent (FTE) position and kept funding for enrichment materials and civics texts while describing plans to review the gifted-and-talented program more broadly. She said an increase in ESOL enrollment required the addition of an ESOL FTE, which is required by law and therefore added to the budget.
The board kept a math interventionist position but reduced it to part time and decided to retain the registrar position to centralize enrollment and verify residency. Peters said the board had eliminated the SAU K-8 director of school counseling position at a $120,000 salary and had arranged for the person moving into a school counseling role to receive a $10,000 stipend to manage K-8 duties, though the district still needs another counselor.
Peters told the committee that the lines the board kept summed to an amount she described in the meeting as "approximately $5,900 still over default" and that the board authorized administration to move other lines and underfund certain lines within the default budget to make up the difference.
Committee members asked clarifying questions about the choice of textbook formats (physical vs. digital), assistive-technology access and whether parents could request students take textbooks home; Peters and other members said hybrid approaches are available and building-level practices vary.
What happens next: The budget committee will review the full budget and may ask for further detail in subsequent meetings; administrative staff will implement the authorized adjustments to bring the proposal in line with the default budget.