Near $6.9M budget moved to July 19 district budget meeting

Referendum will face voters July 26

By Stuart Hedstrom
Staff Writer

GUILFORD — The SAD 4 school board approved a revised 2016-17 budget during a July 6 meeting, with the proposed spending plan totaling $6,877,684. This total represents a decrease of nearly $284,600 from the previous academic year and is over $255,500 less than a budget that was turned down by residents of the six district communities at the June 14 referendum by a margin by 389-149.

The proposed 2016-17 SAD 4 budget will be voted on at the district budget meeting on Tuesday, July 19 at Piscataquis Community Elementary School with the evening starting with an information session at 6 p.m. The total figure approved on July 19 will then go out to a referendum a week later on Tuesday, July 26. Full budget information is at www.sad4.org.

“We had a couple of budget meetings since the other was voted down,” Superintendent Ann Kirkpatrick said, mentioning there also were budget workshops and thanking the budget committee members for all their work.

“One thing I heard from the public is they don’t want to pay more in taxes,” she said. “Our goal was not to shuffle things around but to make more cuts. It was voted down three-to-one and that tells me it’s too high.”

“The voters have said taxes are too high so at this point in the budget we have cut from last year $284,586.14,” Kirkpatrick said.

The budget approved by the school board — via a 10-4 count — includes a local assessment of $3,896,356. This represents a $223,545 increase (6.09 percent) from 2015-16, but is less than the local assessment figure of just under $4,152,000 that was part of the 2017 academic year budget voted down last month. Local assessments are comprised of required and local additional monies, as well as funds for SAD 4’s $44,349 share of the Piscataquis Valley Adult Education Cooperative.

The local assessment is divided into $753,083 for Abbot, $30,364 or 4.2 percent more; $234,167 for Cambridge, up by about $12,790 or 5.46 percent; $1,205,539 for Guilford, an increase of just over $75,000 or 6.22 percent; $537,900 for Parkman, a $49,640 or 9.23 percent increase; $782,255 for Sangerville, a $39,521 or 5.05 percent increase; and $190,231 for Wellington, an increase of $16,188 or 8.51 percent more than in 2015-16.

While the total budget would have remained the same with either option, the board decided to put $55,000 back into contingency while also cutting a grade 1 teaching position vacated by retirement. Instead a teacher will lead a K-1 “looping” class in which students stay with the same educator for two years.

The plan for the fall now is to have two kindergarten classrooms with 31 students split between the two, a looping class with one teacher and a near even division of kindergarten and grade 1 pupils as well as another homeroom made up of all first-graders. Exact classroom counts will be determined by parental decisions.

The school board made formal motions on the elimination and creation of positions and reduction in contracts as part of the proposed $6,877,684 budget. K-6 and secondary science teaching positions and a custodian, which were all vacated, were eliminated as was a Learning For Life position.

A K-3 reading recovery coach and grade 4-6 literacy specialist were also eliminated and will be replaced by an instructional coach/interventionist for K-3 and another for grades 4-6 — the past and future positions are all grant funded. The school board also gave its approval to the creation of the K-1 looping teacher.

The contract reductions are by half for the curriculum coordinator, by 20 percent for the finance director and to 220 days (by about 15 percent) for the transportation director.