Filling in the blanks.

The School Board met last week to begin the process of developing a Middle School only budget. 

This is a necessary exercise in order for the community to have an understanding of all the costs associated with a long term tuition agreement with the Oyster River School District. There are a lot of moving parts and the Middle School budget is only one piece that will require multiple decisions based on hypothetical situations. A daunting task. 

The School Board needs to fill in a lot of blanks for Newmarket residents. This is what they are looking at:

A tuition agreement with ORSD isn't just a matter of signing on the dotted line - never mind the fact that both Oyster River and Newmarket need to VOTE to do this. The issues in our district are complex and one thing often hinges on another and the School Board is tasked with looking at the big picture. 

First, the School Board must determine the Middle School configuration and then develop a facility plan based on that configuration. This was something the School Board seemed hesitant to delve too deeply into at the meeting. School Board members expressed the need for citizen input, something that will hopefully happen at Thursday's meeting and then they may feel more empowered to start making some decisions. 

Next, they will need to get into the meat of the budget. Of course, this will all be for naught if somewhere along the way, the tuition agreement with Oyster River doesn't happen. But at some point in the near future, they will have to start talking about what programs will be offered and how they will be implemented while taking a hard look at the bottom line---just like any other budget cycle.

In the meantime, I think there are a couple important things to point out. 

First: what does this mean to the teaching staff? There's been a lot of talk about teachers losing their jobs, and here are some preliminary numbers. 

Here is a snapshot of the staffing reductions:

A total reduction of 37.1 positions. 

The reduction in staffing represents a savings of approximately $2.18 million. (A word of caution---I use the term "savings" pretty loosely here. This is one piece of the puzzle and we still need a lot of other numbers. Don't plan on your tax bill going down.)

The second question I have is how will this affect programming? This was discussed at different points during the meeting, but I would like to see a program analysis in one place. While Math, Science, English and Social Studies staffing seemed consistent for the 6,7 & 8th graders, some other programs may be altered. 

One program change that was pointed out: currently Jr. High students have access to both Spanish and French. In this proposed budget, only Spanish would be available. However, now some Spanish would also be available to 5th graders, something which isn't currently being offered at the Elementary School. The School Board and the community will need to weigh the pros and cons of these types of changes.

Here's a snapshot of some of those proposed staffing changes:

I think this is all the tip of the iceberg and there is no doubt that the School Board will need to dig much deeper into these numbers in the coming weeks. 

There are many unanswered questions about how this will affect our district and I urge everyone interested to attend tomorrow's School Board meeting and start asking!