Lamoille North board sets half-million dollar limit for trimming school budget

The budget for the middle and high school, which was also voted on by Cambridge residents, passed by 120 votes. Cambridge Elementary School maintains a separate board and budget within the supervisory union.

Board representative Katie Orost of Johnson recommended that Deb Clark, finance and capital committee business manager, come to a special board meeting next Monday with examples of what could be cut from the original budget.

The final amount could be less, but Orost and the committee picked $500,000 as a good starting point.

“We looked at a couple different options, and we just threw a number on the wall to see what the impact will be,” Orost said. “Next Monday night, the administrators are tasked with coming back to us and saying, ‘This is what $500,000 cuts will look like,’ and we’ll have hard information to then decide upon.”

A full $500,000 reduction in the budget would mean a little over 3 percent reduction in the budget for the five elementary schools.

To meet any possible contractual obligations for school staff, the board must move quickly with any plan to reduce the budget.

An informational meeting on the new budget is set for April 15, and the revised budget vote will be held April 16.

The cuts are a concession to a small group of voters. The combined tax impact of the elementary, middle and high school budgets was projected to be just under 3 percent.

“The board is going to need to decide about what we next put forward to the voters. Are they going to cut the very small amount of capital funds we have or are they going to move further into programming for students?” superintendent Catherine Gallagher said, noting that neither budget added any new programs or services.

Despite its minor tax impact and the district generally benefiting from the education funding policy changes wrought by Act 127, Gallagher saw the elementary school budget as a casualty of the general animosity against the policy and fear of rising expenses.

“I think that there was too much information coming from too many sources to our community members without enough time to really sift through it and figure out.” Gallagher said. “I think if people in general look at programming and services for kids and rule out all the noise that surrounded Act 127, and then the subsequent H.850, we’d be in much better shape.”

“Property taxes are an emotional thing for people, rightly so,” she said. “But you still have to run school systems. Whether your property taxes are high or low, there’s always going to be a school system to run, and we have to do right by our children, especially given the fact that Vermont is an aging state. If we want students to do well, and to live here and to be able to find a job that provides them with a living wage, then we need to support our students.”