$1M surplus earmarked for repairs to schools

School administrators want to use a $1 million budget surplus to improve Harwood school buildings.

Administrators have proposed a $38,519,315 budget for the 2019-20 school year, up $1,336,164 — 3.6 percent —from the current budget of $37,183,150.

The new budget includes a $1 million surplus expected from fiscal year 2017; the money will be used “to address some of the larger maintenance items,” said Michelle Baker, director of finance and operations for the district.

There’s already about $900,000 in the district’s maintenance reserve fund. Maintenance projects budgeted for 2019-20 include:

• $250,000 for roof repair and replacement at Crossett Brook Middle School.

• $200,000 for HVAC in the high school auditorium.

• $170,000 to upgrade HVAC controls at Crossett Brook.

• $100,000 for a new boiler at Warren Elementary School.

The budget allocates $1,116,800 for maintenance, and proposes spending an additional $1,053,390 in the 2020-21. Those upgrades would include:

• $309,000 for HVAC upgrades to the high school.

• $252,390 to repair the high school roof.

• $250,000 to repair and replace the roof at Crossett Brook.

• $100,000 for a boiler at Fayston Elementary.

All told, school officials expect a $1.6 million surplus at the end of this school year, and the law requires that the money be moved to a reserve fund, or be used to lower the amount needed from taxpayers for the next budget, or some combination of the two.

Baker told board members it was up to them to decide what to do with the remaining $600,000 surplus, but warned that using it to lower next year’s taxes will make things challenging the following year.

“The difficulty of using large fund balances to offset the budget in any one particular year is that next year it’s more difficult when you don’t have that money available,” Baker said.

It is worth noting that, except for the maintenance costs, the proposed 2019-20 budget is rising $870,124, or 2.4 percent.

Budget drivers

Health-care costs are driving up the budget by $351,757, or 11 percent. This budget year, Harwood is paying $3,146,305 for health insurance, obtained through the Vermont Health Insurance Initiative. The organization used $8 million in reserve funds to subsidize costs in the current school year, but will not subsidize costs in 2019-20.

The budget also funds a new job: a coordinator for proficiency-based learning. The job includes administrative recordkeeping, working with special educators and interventionists, and updating parents on the academic progress of their children. The job is budgeted at $75,000 with the actual salary depending on experience.

The budget adds a total of 3.7 full-time-equivalent jobs. The others:

• 1 kindergarten teacher at Moretown Elementary.

• A 0.7 full-time-equivalent teacher for grades five and six at Crossett Brook.

• 1 kindergarten paraeducator at Waitsfield Elementary.

The budget also eliminates 3.3 full-time-equivalent jobs, including one high school math teacher, through retirements or resignations.

Superintendent Brigid Nease pushed back on suggestions that loss of the math teacher would eliminate Math Lab, a place where students across all grades and all math courses can receive support in math.

“There’s never been a discussion of obliterating or ending the math lab,” Nease said, waving a dismissive hand toward the audience. “You may think that’s the case, but there’s another plan for managing the Math Lab.”

Nease did not discuss what that plan is, and declined to be interviewed for this story, saying she will communicate only by email.

The big picture

The budget increase is being proposed as enrollment — a two-year average used to calculate per-pupil costs — are projected to fall, from 1,846.85 students this year to 1,809.91 next year, a 2 percent decline.

Harwood enrollment peaked at 2,137 in 2000.

The proposed budget would raise per-pupil spending from $17,136.88 this year to $17,986.10 in 2019-20, up $849.22 per pupil, 4.9 percent.

A budget based on the current per-pupil figure would be $1.5 million less than administrators are proposing.

Board member Linda Hazard of Moretown suggested that administrators explain how staffing and programs would be affected if the budget were $1.5 million less.

“I would like to see what that looks like and also some analysis of what it would look like if we put the two middle schools together,” Hazard said.

Nease told Hazard that isn’t going to happen.

“We do not have the capacity to go back and look at ‘what would happen ifs’ by any one of your good ideas. We are out straight running the schools, dealing with power outages, dealing with snowy days,” Nease told Hazard. “We’ve gone down the path of bringing the middle schools together. The idea of calculating that is a huge amount of work. We don’t have that capacity, even if the whole board wanted us to do that.”

Board member Jill Ellis of Fayston said such analysis would be a waste of time because the board would not make those kinds of cuts anyway.

“Level funding has never been a palatable option for any of the budgets I have ever done,” Ellis said.