On March 22, 2023, the Board of Education (BoE) approved the budget for the 2023-2024 Fiscal School Year. On April 12, 2023 this BoE Approved Budget was presented at the Town’s Board of Finance regular meeting. The presentation began by quoting the work of John Hattie. Hattie synthesized 1,000 research reviews of 50,000 studies and found the greatest influence on student progression in learning is having highly expert, inspired, and passionate teachers and school leaders working to maximize the effect of their teaching on all students in their care. In fact, collective teacher efficacy has a stronger influence on achievement than any other factor of the school, teacher, or student level.
To provide an overview of our anticipated increases and decreases, insurance rates have increased 25.7%, but at this time we do not anticipate this to negatively impact our budget based on current enrollment and projected assumptions saving $17,578. Additionally, there is an anticipated reduction in art by one day and physical education by half of a day. These reductions will not impact our student’s experience in art or physical education, rather we are consolidating the schedule to be more efficient so that students still receive the same amount of art and physical education and better align to our multi-age team programming with a cost savings of $26,303.
In order to align with the town on percent increase for unaffiliated staff, the board submitted a 3.5% increase for all unaffiliated staff as well as a 4% and 5% option to match what the town chooses to do. Further changes addressed in the budget reflect the increase of our special education population resulting in the need of our special education director twice a week as opposed to the current once a week position, an increase of $20,805. Additionally, through legislation, all towns are required to have one of five approved reading curricular programs that align with the Science of Reading. This comes at a cost estimate of $15,000 and while there is talks of a grant becoming available, it is not available at the time of this publication. Other increases reflected in the budget align to our actual usage and anticipated increases of oil, diesel, and electricity used to maintain a safe learning environment for our students, totaling $32,582. Tuition for our students who attend other programs, primarily the STEM program in Windham, is an additional cost that we can’t forecast past the information we have. Currently we will be responsible for at least 8 students in the coming school year totaling $42,420.
The last changes reflected in the 2023-2024 budget is a reduction of $3,000 in the professional development line as we transition most of our professional development in-house due to the roll out of a new reading curriculum; and there is an increase of $10,000 in the legal line due to required contract negotiations for our affiliated staff. This brings the total budget to a 4.44% increase totaling $2,140,288.
Samatha Sarli, HES Superintendent