Dr. David Hopson
I hope that everyone enjoyed the holidays and has started the new year with a positive attitude. I know that the majority of staff and students seem to be back into the swing of things as we get ready to wind down the first half of the school year.
With the temperature in the teens and snow banks everywhere, I’m already thinking of all the things that have to be done to prepare for spring and realizing that the cold and snowy weather will soon disappear. From preparing for the spring planting season in the greenhouse, to the lambs that are already being born, to discussions on whether this will be a good sugar season and the fact that the daylight hours are already lengthening, the signs of spring are already visible. Despite being only halfway through the school year, we’ve reached the beginning of the public portion of the district’s budget development. During the December school committee meeting, the committee voted to move forward with what is essentially a ‘level service’ budget, providing us with our parameters for the first budget draft and estimated to be an increase in the bottom line of approximately $500,000,.
During the month of January, school administrators will be reviewing budget requests and priorities with the school committee (such information will then be posted on the district website). I’ve been pleased that we’ve started to see some town officials attending the school committee meetings as we move into the budget season and hope that this participation increases over the next three months. Stephanie Fisk and I have also been cordially invited to begin sharing information with the newly reformed GTAC committee and we look forward to an open exchange of information and ideas as the process moves forward.
While January will be spent reviewing the expenditure side of the budget, I’m sure that both town and school officials throughout the state are anxiously awaiting the estimates of local aid that will first be proposed in the Governors’ House 1 budget at the end of January. It appears that the national ‘fiscal cliff’ has been pushed off for the next Congress to deal with, leaving schools throughout the country wondering what will happen with federal aid to education. If the past year is any indication of the future, we’ll likely be well into next year’s operations before definitive action is taken in Washington and we have solid numbers to use in budgeting.
As in so many past years, developing, adopting, and passing the budget will be an interesting process with many opportunities, obstacles, and bumps along the way to having a budget in place to begin the fiscal year on July 1, 2013. The district will continue to freely share information in a variety of ways to help ensure that our towns’ citizens can be well informed when making decisions at annual town meetings. As always, my hope is that town meetings are well attended with a mix of people broadly representing the towns, something that seems more difficult to obtain as the years go by.
