Souhegan School Board Urges Passage of Budget, Building Repairs, and Other Warrant Articles

The Souhegan School Board asks for your support on March 12^th for our proposed budget and roof bond.  This is an extraordinary budget proposal for Souhegan, and your support is critical.  Why? 

• The need for a roof replacement is real, and every delay costs us all wasted dollars to repair leak damage as the number of hard-to-find leaks grow.  Similarly, the rooftop heating and ventilation units are well beyond their useful life, inefficient to run, and failing regularly.  Every repair to outdated equipment is wasted money.  The roof, and the rooftop units, will never get better on their own, and will only continue to break down and cause more costs and damage, with repairs only getting more expensive and harder to do over time.

• Enrollments have declined over the last few years, and staffing levels are being brought into alignment with the new reality.   The proposed staffing reduction is the largest in the school’s history.  Changing from growth mode to downsizing mode has been painful for the administration and board, and for the entire school community.  While enrollments are now projected to stabilize for a few years before starting another decline, we have now shifted to analyzing enrollment and staffing allocations in a more analytical and critical fashion, which we expect will yield further savings in future budgets. 

• We are joining with our partner districts in SAU 39 to develop a unified strategic plan which should provide more opportunities for streamlining, eliminating repetitive work, and utilizing existing resources with higher efficiency.  The recently adopted mathematics curriculum, crossing all grades K-12 in Mont Vernon and Amherst, is the first example of such unified and efficient planning, and more opportunities are being addressed.   We believe our attention is best applied to careful planning for future educational gains and efficiencies, not reacting to localized and tactical budget shortfalls.

• The professional and support staff at Souhegan are important partners in all that we do – our primary mission of educating our children well, as well as all that goes into that, including lean and efficient purchasing, wise use of resources, and innovative modern practices.  Our proposed two year staff agreement recognizes this partnership, with the mutual repect between the staff and the  community through reasonable and modest bargaining.  Your support for this agreement is vital to continuing the partnership focused on allowing our high school students to succeed in life beyond 12^th grade.

In addition to the “usual suspects” who play critical roles in developing the budget, bond, and warrant articles (School Board, SAU Administration, Souhegan High School Administration and staff), we also recognize the important and helpful role our volunteer Advisory Finance Committee played in formulating this budget.   Their influence and challenges to the board and adminstration shaped this budget, and will continue to influence budget development for the forseeable future, the benefit of all taxpayers and students.

Souhegan Cooperative School Board

Howard Brown, Mont Vernon
Steve Coughlan, Amherst
Pim Grondstra, Mont Vernon
Fran Harrow, Amherst
Chris Janson, Amherst
Peter Maresco, Amherst
Mary Lou Mullens, Amherst