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• Article 1 – School Budget
• Article 2 – Technology Replacement Trust Fund
• Article 3 – Transact other business

Article 1 – School Budget

Proposed budget: Shall the Allenstown School District vote to raise and appropriate as an operating budget, not including appropriations by special warrant article and other operations voted separately, the amounts set forth on the budget posted with the warrant or as amended by vote of the first session, for the purposes set forth therein, totaling $8,780,000?

Default budget: Should this article be defeated, the operating budget shall be $9,756,468 which is the same as last year, with certain adjustments required by previous action of the Allenstown School District, or by law, or the governing body may hold one special meeting in accordance with RSA 40:13, X and XVI, to take up the issue of a revised operating budget only.

Note: Warrant Article #1(operating budget article) does not include separate warrant article #2.

School Board recommends approval. Budget Committee recommends approval. This was done at the Dec. 19, 2013 meeting.

Commentary: Dec. 12, 2013 was the first time the Budget Committee saw the dozen or so pages of densely formatted budget items. The initial surprise was that the proposed budget was $9,783,805.00 – higher than the default budget of $9,756,468. The budget committee felt that voters would look at this and vote for the lower amount. They asked the School Board to try to bring their budget under default. Note that the school tax had increased from the July 2013 bill to the December 2013 bill by about 62%, some of which was due to property revaluation, but it was still a bitter pill to swallow.

An astonishing fact was discovered at that meeting. For a total school population of 556, the proposed budget was $9,783,805 for the 2014-2015 school year. This worked out to $17,596 per student. Allenstown sends 166 high school students to Pembroke Academy for a total cost of $1,855,063 (part of the total budget). This worked out to $11,175 per student. For comparison, the school board said the state average was $13,647 per student. Thus Pembroke educates our high school students for about $6,372 per student less than Allenstown. The school board could not quite explain that.

At the Dec. 19 budget meeting, the school board could not present a lower budget. When the budget committee was told that, by law, they had to specify the line items to be cut, they eventually voted to cut $27,337 from the Replacement Equipment items. This made the proposed budget equal to the default budget ($9,756,468). The School Board would not lift a finger to help with this decision but they agreed to the cut.

Fast forward to the Feb. 1, 2014 Deliberative Session. The voters spent two hours debating the Town and Sewer budgets and warrant articles and then spent only five minutes on the much larger School budget. One voter, however, made a motion to cut this budget by a whopping $1 million. The proposed cut was hotly debated at length. The chairman of the budget committee insisted that the committee had no involvement in this proposed cut. Finally, the Moderator called for a show of hands.

The motion passed narrowly by 29-28. Because it was so close, the Moderator called for a secret ballot. This time the motion passed by 35-33. The remaining two articles were read with little comment and after three hours the meeting was recessed.

Taking a side trip to the 2014 Pembroke School Warrant, article #10 has a proposed school budget of $24,528,230. Pembroke school enrollment had to be obtained from each school (the SAU office was unable to provide a total number even though they oversee the schools). For all schools in Pembroke, the total was 1,607. This worked out to $15,263/student, or $2284/student less than the Allenstown default budget ($9,756,468).

Using the proposed Allenstown school budget of $8,780,000 (from Feb. 1), the cost per student drops to $15,791, very close to the Pembroke average.

Bottom Line: The Allenstown school system seems to be too expensive. We might be better off sending our children to the Pembroke schools.

Recommendation: Yes

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Article 2 – Technology Replacement Trust Fund

To see if the Allenstown School District will vote to change the purpose of the existing Technology Replacement Trust Fund to include new technology as well as installation and labor costs associated with the technology purchases and to rename the fund to the Technology, Installation, and Labor Expendable Trust Fund and further to name the School Board as agents to expend from this fund. (2/3 vote required)

Commentary: This is a simple name change that allows the fund to be used for other costs related to implementing new technology.

Recommendation: Yes

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Article 3 – Transact other business that may legally come before said meeting.

Commentary: After the huge cut to the School budget, there wasn't must else worth talking about. The next step is the March 11 elections.

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2014 Election Links

Suggested Cuts – Larry Anderson

Analysis of 3/3/14 Monitor article