Similar bottom line without middle school merger in revised budget up for vote June 16

May 26, 2020  |  By Lisa Scagliotti

Photo by Lisa Scagliotti.

The Harwood Unified Union School Board will hold a public hearing online on Wednesday to explain and answer questions about the revised budget proposal for 2020-21 that will be on the ballot for a special election June 16.  

The board on May 13 agreed to schedule the vote approximately two weeks before the current budget year ends. The new budget would take effect July 1. 

The proposed budget has a total of $39,751,941. That is just $20,401 less than the budget that voters rejected on Town Meeting Day, March 3. The per-pupil spending is essentially the same as with the original plan – $18,397 now compared with $18,400 in March, which is an increase of 2.47% from the current school year’s budget.

The main difference with the new proposal, however, is that it does not rely on a major reconfiguration of the district’s two middle schools. 

The March proposal that failed would have closed Harwood Union Middle School this fall by sending the seventh- and eighth-grade students from the Mad River Valley communities of Fayston, Moretown, Waitsfield, and Warren to Crossett Brook Middle School. It also would have added Moretown’s grade 5-6 students to Crossett Brook in the fall. 

Crossett Brook currently serves students in grades 5-8 from Duxbury and Waterbury. 

Those moves would have necessitated temporary classroom structures to be installed at the Crossett Brook campus ahead of any building expansion to accommodate the increased enrollment. The consolidation would also have had staffing impacts at both the middle school level and at Harwood Union High School. 

Voters rejected that budget plan 3,048 to 2,254 on March 3. 

The revised budget on the June 16 ballot leaves the middle school configurations unchanged for the 2020-21 school year. 

Voters urged to request early ballots

The warning for the June vote was completed last week with details on voting times and places for each of the school district’s six communities. 

Because of the ongoing public health concerns about COVID-19, school and town officials are encouraging local voters to request ballots ahead of election day. Town clerks should have ballots soon and will be able to mail them to voters who, in turn, can mail them back by June 16. 

Each town will still have in-person voting on June 16, but mailed-in ballots should help reduce the number of people at the polls and the person-to-person contact between voters and election workers. 

“In-person voting will be available in each of our six towns on June 16th, but we hope that most of our voters will vote by mail in advance,” the board said in its announcement of the upcoming vote. 

In Waterbury, voters may email or call Town Clerk Carla Lawrence to request a ballot: 244-8447 or clawrence@waterburyvt.com. Alternately, on June 16, voting will happen at the municipal offices from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. More details on how the polls will be run that day will be announced closer to the date.

In Duxbury, voters may contact Town Clerk Maureen Harvey by phone or email for a ballot: call 244-6660 or email duxtc@myfairpoint.net.

On June 16, according to the warning for the vote, Duxbury will conduct “drive-up voting” at Crossett Brook Middle School from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Moretown also is listed as planning on using a similar system. More details on how that will work will be announced closer to the vote.

Just as with a regular election, after the polls close, ballots from all six polling places will be transported to Harwood Union High School where they will be commingled and counted by election officials from each of the communities. 

The school board in establishing the special election also agreed to cover the costs incurred by the municipalities to host the vote. 

How this budget is different

Although the new budget on the June ballot is very close to the amount the school district asked voters to approve in March, administrators and the school board needed to make spending cuts in order to arrive at virtually the same figure. 

That’s because the decision to not move more students to Crossett Brook added expenses back into the equation. Keeping both middle schools in operation added $700,000 back into the spending column for next year. 

A combination of cuts and updated cost estimates came to $720,000, which resulted in the new figure on the June 16 ballot that’s $20,000 shy of the March budget proposal. 

Some of the specific spending cuts and reductions were: 

• $234,000 by eliminating new staff positions including a music teacher at Crossett Brook, part-time nurses in Moretown and Fayston, an IT staffer, and a library assistant at Thatcher Brook. 

• $160,000 eliminated for professional development, conferences, workshops

• $143,000 from special education teacher retirements and eliminating some high school support staff increases

• $55,000 in lower transportation costs due to a lower bid than expected

• $50,000 removed from legal expenses directed at bullying and harassment claims 

• $30,000 from a part-time art teacher retirement 

• $15,000 by removing installation of playground equipment at Fayston Elementary School

Using a formula based on enrollment, administrators trimmed another $69,000 with school-specific cuts that ranged from $2,500 at Fayston (not buying a new cafeteria table) to $24,800 at Harwood (reducing a Social Studies teacher position; trimming professional training; reducing purchases of books, supplies, equipment). 

In that equation, $12,600 for field trips was cut from Crossett Brook’s budget. Thatcher Brook reduced field trip spending by $5,500, library book purchases by $4,200, and the iMove program by $4,300. 

Online presentation Wednesday

The school board will conduct a public hearing on the 2020-21 budget proposal at 6 p.m. Wednesday, prior to its regular board meeting at 7 p.m. Both the hearing and the regular meeting will be held online via Zoom audio-video conference. 

Details on how to log into the budget hearing are on the June 16 vote warning and specifics to log into the board’s regular meeting are on the board's May 27 meeting agenda. Both documents are on the HUUSD website under the “Board” heading. 

Middle school change still on horizon

While merging the middle schools is not happening this fall, school leaders are still keen on exploring that step for the district as soon as fall 2021. 

At its meeting last week, the board discussion looked ahead to the work it foresees for the remainder of this calendar year. The board plans to hold two meetings in June -- June 10 and 24 -- and then take its usual break in July. The board discussed a priority for June being Superintendent Brigid Nease’s job review, with the suggestion that it devote most of its June 10 meeting to an executive session for that purpose. 

Board Chair Caitlin Hollister of Waterbury explained that the process would involve anonymous input from staff that would be reviewed and discussed by board members. Nease’s contract with the district runs through June 2021 but the board must indicate whether it plans to renew it by September, Hollister said. 

When the board returns in August, it will work with administrators to monitor finance concerns given the economic hit the state is taking due to the COVID-19 shutdowns. Impacts on state revenues are expected to ripple through state government including school funding which may put a crunch on school districts to revise their 2020-21 budgets midstream. 

The statewide economic outlook will certainly affect budget planning for the 2021-22 school year, work that both the board and administrators say should begin in the fall. 

The board last week briefly  discussed the intra-district choice policy that allows families to request that their child attend a school other than the one designated for the town where they reside. That policy, in effect since the district consolidated in 2017, has led to requests that shift student numbers and impact enrollment in various schools. 

For example, requests last fall for students to attend Crossett Brook rather than Harwood Middle School in fall 2021 were a key factor in Superintendent Brigid Nease’s recommendation to combine all Harwood Middle School students at Crossett Brook. 

That policy will likely get more attention later in the year when the board resumes its work on a detailed pre-K-to-grade-12 plan. Decisions made to detail the district’s overall vision since it consolidated will drive logistics and future spending.

Board members last week discussed the importance of hashing out that plan before getting into the details of the 2020-21 school budget. 

“I would like to get to the pre-K-to-12 plan sooner rather than later since one of the criticisms we had around this year’s budget was that we hadn't allowed understandably adequate time to talk about merging the middle schools,” said Waterbury School Board member Alexandra Thomsen. She pointed out that two big parts of that plan are merging the middle schools and possibly closing Fayston Elementary School which has the district’s smallest enrollment. “If that's what our intent is for 2021, we need to start talking about it now,” Thomsen said.

Some board members suggested getting outside advice on how to structure the district’s schools. Jonathan Clough of Warren and Theresa Membrino of Fayston stressed that public input should be a priority before any decisions on major changes are made. 

Waitsfield board member Christine Sullivan called the pre-k-to-12 plan “the elephant in the room” and she urged the board to be decisive when it revisits it. “Some people are concerned about the best direction and the configurations, and some people are just tired of us spending  money running more schools than we need to,” Sullivan said. “We as a board have to do what we think makes the most sense and stand behind it and move forward.”