Preston school board sticks with budget

Preston — The Board of Education will not cut its proposed $12 million budget prior to any possible formal action by the Board of Finance, the school board decided Monday.

The board voted 6-0, with member Dan Harris absent, to affirm its support for the proposed 2018-19 school budget, which it presented to the finance board on March 22. The proposed budget calls for a 3.04 percent, $355,915 spending increase over this year’s $11.7 million total.

The Board of Finance on March 28 voted to ask the Board of Education and the Board of Selectmen to consider cutting $100,000 from each of their budget proposals and submit revised budgets by the end of this week. The Board of Selectmen will meet at 6:30 p.m. Thursday to discuss the request.

Board of Education Chairman Sean Nugent said the board already did a “lot of due diligence” on the budget with school administrators prior to presenting it to the finance board, reviewing every line item in a process more detailed than in past years. The school board’s budget committee met four times, each meeting lasting 2½ hours, and the full board discussed the budget in detail at three meetings, Nugent said.

The proposed school budget includes $72,218 in salary and benefits for a new full-time social worker, $65,320 for an additional elementary school teacher and $45,000 for 1.5 para-educator positions. The para-educators were hired midway through the current school year using savings in the special education budget.

Nugent said along with the budget totals and breakdown, the school officials provided the finance board with projections of personnel cuts that would result if the budget were cut.

If the school budget was kept at a 2 percent increase, two full-time equivalent positions could be cut, at no increase over this year, 6.8 positions could be cut, and if the budget were cut by 2 percent from this year, 9.7 positions could be cut.

“We gave an indication of what the impacts would be, with full-time equivalents as a reference,” Nugent said.

Nugent said the school board also did not want to commit to cutting any specific amount from the budget without a formal directive from the finance board.

In making the request two weeks ago, finance board Chairwoman Melissa Lennon said her board wanted to hear from the school board and the selectmen on where they would cut their budgets, since those boards created the budgets and have more expertise on them.

The Board of Finance is planning an April 24 special meeting to discuss the budgets.