DOVER — The School Board made clear it was not going to support a budget that would eliminate teaching positions and increase class sizes.
And that’s what the school district budget would look like if it came in under the tax cap, according to the Dover School District administration.
At a School Board budget workshop Monday evening, the last one before the seven-member board approves its 2019 fiscal year budget, the board went through the budget again with a fine-toothed comb in efforts to find any additional savings.
In December, Superintendent William Harbron introduced a budget level-funded to the current year with added contractual obligations. That number began at $2.3 million over the tax cap and did not include any wish-list items from administrators or the School Board on beginning to fulfill its recently adopted five-year strategic plan.
On Monday, that number was reduced to under $1.5 million over the tax cap allowance after a month and a half of fine-tuning the budget, obtaining revised cost estimates and getting a more concrete figure of what the district’s tax cap allowance will be, which was more than anticipated. The School Board proposed some additional cuts that brought that number to under $1.4 million. There are further cuts that some board members suggested but are waiting to get additional information on potential impacts from the administration next week before making a final decision.
The amount above the tax cap does not include the $1.3 million in debt service payments for the new high school. That's an additional overage the City Council had agreed to when approving funding the new high school.
At the workshop, Harbron reluctantly presented a budget that met the tax cap requirement, but it cut positions he felt were crucial to the students' education. To realize $1.5 million in savings, Harbron suggested the elimination of seven full-time teachers, three full-time professional services staff and six full-time paraprofessionals. Those cuts would bring in more than $1 million in savings.
The School Board immediately rejected the elimination of the positions. School Board Chair Amanda Russell told the board that it is its job to bring a budget to the City Council that meets the educational needs of the students and doesn’t overburden the taxpayers. Cutting those positions would not hold up the first part of that job, the School Board felt.
Last week, a day after the Joint Fiscal Committee meeting that included all members of the City Council and School Board, Mayor Karen Weston said she would not support a budget that came in over the tax cap. At the JFC meeting, Russell had asked the City Council to consider raising the tax cap allowance by $1.3 million to account for the state adequacy aid money the city received from a lawsuit in 2016. That money, against the wishes of the School Board, went to pay down the debt payment for the new high school in the current fiscal year, she said. The board would have instead had the money put into a capital reserve account.
Russell told the City Council if the School Board had to have a budget come under the tax cap, “The only way to come up with that money is to eliminate teachers.”
The School Board is to meet on Feb. 12 to finalize the district’s 2019 budget.