School annual meeting includes a budget overview ahead of Tuesday’s vote
March 6, 2023 | By Lisa Scagliotti Town Meeting Day eve is the traditional time the Harwood Unified Union School District holds its in-person annual meeting to cover housekeeping items ahead of the district-wide vote by ballot on school budget questions the following day.
That meeting happens at 6 p.m. tonight at Harwood Union High School and online via zoom. Voters in all of the district’s communities are invited and able to participate although the meeting rarely draws more than a handful of local residents beyond the school board members and staff in attendance.
The meeting is an opportunity for voters to learn more about the proposed school budget items on Tuesday’s ballot and ask questions. The meeting will include a presentation on the proposed $45,422,241 budget for the 2023-24 school year starting on July 1.
A second question on Tuesday’s ballot asks voters to authorize putting $696,931 into the district’s Maintenance Reserve Fund. The sum is unspent funds from the budget year that ended in June 2022. The district usually looks to assign surplus funds from the prior year’s budget to the maintenance account to pay for building repairs and facility improvement projects. Last year, voters approved allocating $1.5 million to the fund. The fund presently has just over $4 million in it, according to the district’s annual report.
The budget and maintenance reserve questions cannot be altered at this time since they are printed on the ballots.
Some highlights
The proposed $45.4 million budget for the 2023-24 school year is up nearly $2.8 million or 6.5% over the current year’s $42.6 million that voters approved last year. School staff and the school board emphasized building the budget based on level programming and services with the increase reflecting higher wage and benefit costs.
The ballot notes that the budget works out to $22,322 per equalized pupil, an increase of 10% over this year’s $20,238. That figure is calculated using a formula required by the state that takes into account two years of a school district’s “average daily membership” enrollment data that tallies full-time students.
The volatile real estate market has caused rapid increases in property values in the past couple of years which is then reflected in the formula used to calculate how to apply the school tax rate in each town. The state uses a factor called the Common Level of Appraisal to try to equalize property value differences from town to town.
Although the equalized tax rate for the coming year has dropped 5% to $1.44 per $100 assessed property value, the net result based on changing property values and the common level of appraisal will mean increases in the school property tax portion of tax bills across the Harwood district communities. School officials estimate an average increase of 7% overall.
In Waterbury, the estimated school tax rate for next year is $1.91 compared with $1.76 this year, an increase of 8.5%. Duxbury taxpayers can expect a 7.7% increase from $1.81 to $1.90. Warren is expected to see the highest increase of 9.5% to $1.96; Fayston looks to have the smallest increase of 4.7% to $1.78.
The annual report online has a very detailed discussion of the tax calculations. It also refers to recent reporting by The Times Argus on the topic.
Other business
Tonight’s annual meeting will cover business items done each year such as electing a moderator, a clerk, and a treasurer for the next year and accepting district officer reports.
Only those in attendance may vote on Monday’s items that also include authorizing the school board to hire an accountant to review school finances at the end of this school year and giving the board permission to borrow money in anticipation of tax revenue.
Those at the meeting will also vote to set compensation for school board members and other district officers for the coming year. In 2022, the amounts approved were: $950 each for the school board chair and vice chair; $750 for other board members; $250 to the district clerk to write the annual meeting minutes and $50 per hour for additional voting or petitions; $100 for the district moderator, and $1,000 for the treasurer.
School board elections
Of the HUUSD School Board’s 14 seats, eight are on Town Meeting Day election ballots across the district. None of the positions have any contests, however. Voters will fill these positions as part of their elections for various town officials on Tuesday. Most towns will conduct their elections via paper ballot except for Fayston where all town business and elections will be done at an in-person meeting.
In Waterbury, Kelley Hackett is running for a single year term remaining on one of the town’s four school board seats. She’s served one three-year term already. Jake Pitman from Waterbury was appointed in October to fill a vacancy and is running for a full three-year term.
In Duxbury, both incumbent board members are running for election: Cindy Senning for a three-year term after serving two years so far; Life LeGeros was appointed in 2022 and is running to serve the remaining two years for his seat.
In Moretown, newcomer Ben Clark is running for a three-year term as current board member Lisa Mason is not seeking re-election. Waitsfield’s Christine Sullivan, the longest-serving member of the unified school board, also is not on the ballot for the first time in years. J.B. Weir is seeking that three-year seat.
Voters in Fayston need to fill both of their town’s two seats on the school board. So far only one candidate, Danielle Duquette, has announced her interest in the seat that Mike Bishop has held since last year; it has one year remaining having previously been held by Theresa Membrino who resigned in spring 2022. The other seat has two years remaining in its term; it has been held since last spring by Kim Laidlaw who was appointed when no one ran to succeed Tim Jones in 2022. Because Fayston’s town meeting and elections are all held in person, voters at town meeting could fill both positions from candidates present.
Warren is the only district community where neither of its school board seats are up for election this year.
Details on the proposed budget, school enrollment, district tax information, individual schools along with reports from the superintendent, finance director, and more are in the HUUSD Annual Report and FY2024 Budget online on the HUUSD.org website.