December 24,
2009
MEMBER
EDITORIAL
One less French Fry in the School Board's Happy Meal
By
BILL GORDON
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Earlier this month, the Goffstown Budget Committee received a
proposed $33,593,896 budget from the School Board.
Let me break that school budget into two pieces: Administration and Education.
Keep in mind that "Administration" includes the School Board, the SAU and School Administrative Services (the various principals and office functions).
The "Education" portion is everything else, including the grounds, buildings, transportation, extra curricular activities and, most importantly,
the teachers, and what they need to support their mission.
These two pieces break down to $2,291,663 for
Administration and $29,940,694 for Education.
The Budget
Committee reduced the school's proposed budget by $691,539.
Now I am going to break down the $691,539 of downward adjustments I proposed to the Budget Committee and they in turn adopted without amendment.
$431,179 or 62.5% of the entire reduction is targeted at
Administration, leaving all $259,360 in the Education portion of the school budget intact.
That amounts to 99.13% of the School Board's funding request for educating our children.
That reduction to the educational lines amounts to one french fry removed from a Happy Meal®.
Using the same Happy Meal analogy, on the administrative portion equates a sip from the eight ounce drink.
In closing, the school budget that the Budget Committee is bringing forward is a full 2% more than the current school budget appropriation and the student population is, if anything, decreasing.
The taxpayers and the budget committee need to be more aware of the runaway expense of the schools especially in administrative costs.
Do you know that the school population is roughly 3000 students and it costs $1000 just to administer the place where they get their education!
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