Timberlane superintendent predicts tough budget year

From the Eagle Tribune;

Timberlane superintendent predicts tough budget year

By Cara Hogan chogan@eagletribune.com The Eagle Tribune Thu Oct 28, 2010, 12:24 AM EDT

The Timberlane Regional School District may have a tough time balancing the budget this year.

The district Budget Committee will meet for the first time today to go over the proposed school district budget for fiscal year 2012-2013.

It's early in the process and Budget Committee members were reluctant to say much about the proposal at this point.

Last week, the school administration presented a small fraction of the proposed budget — about $6 million of the probable total of $60 million.

"What you see there is a preliminary budget," Budget Committee Chairman Michelle O'Neil said yesterday. "It doesn't include health benefits or personnel costs, and more. We don't have a total dollar value yet."

But Superintendent Richard La Salle had some predictions for the challenges facing the school district this year.

"The economic situation of the state is tough," La Salle said. "The state sends us money for providing an adequate education, called adequacy. In the past two years, New Hampshire has paid for adequacy out of the Obama stimulus money, so that money goes away. There's a large shortfall, as much as $220 million the state has to make up in revenues this year. That has implications in terms of how much the state will be sending us."

He said the state also voted to decrease the money it spends on employee retirement by about 10 percent, while increasing the amount required, putting another burden on local schools and towns.

"The cost of employee retirement is expensive for us," La Salle said. "That's a very large ticket item for us, in the hundreds of thousands of dollars."

The loss of revenue, combined with increased expenses, makes this a difficult year for the school, he said.

"We still have to pay our bills," La Salle said. "Administrators have been charged with coming in with an extremely lean budget and they have accomplished that. But we're in the people business and the majority of our budget has to do with personnel costs. Our enrollments are declining a bit and I suspect we will have some reductions of positions due to class size."

La Salle said the committee still has some big decisions to make.

"It's an extremely tough time for the state and for those agencies, whether municipalities, fire, police or schools," La Salle said. "The School Board and Budget Committee know this and we're working hard. We'll continue to work on this through December."

Last year's Timberlane District budget was $62 million.

The district includes Timberlane Regional Middle and High School, Atkinson Academy, Danville Elementary, Pollard School and Sandown Elementary schools.