FARMINGTON — Regional School Unit 9 board of directors reviewed and adopted their budget for the 2023-2024 school year on Tuesday, April 25. The budget was voted on in seven separate motions and, according to Superintendent Christian Elkington, took seven weeks of drafting to get the final product.

An early version of the budget draft was presented to the public on Tuesday, April 5, before the regular board meeting. Items on the budget were as follows:

• $11,576,741 for Pre-K – Grade 12 regular instructional program

• $8,123,414 for instructional program for students Pre-K – adult identified with special needs

• $2,965,524 for Foster Career & Technical Education programs

• $3,343,791 for programs in guidance, social work, library media centers, school health [nurses], curriculum & assessment, and instructional technology

• $563,143 for co and extra curricular programs

• $1,367,622 for superintendent’s office, school board, fiscal services [business office], district wide portion of instructional technology

• $1,835,131 for school building level administrative offices [principals and administrative assistants for all seven schools in the district]

• $2,913,488 for all aspects of student transportation services

• $5,330,014 for all aspects of custodial and maintenance operations

• $4,000,904 for existing expenses for project related debt service

• $551,072 for all aspects of adult education programming

In total, $42,028,772 was expected to be the estimated budget for 2023/2024 school year, with increases accounting for rising supply cost, two new social worker positions, a full-time FTE assistant director, and a speech pathologist and three Ed Techs III positions for special services. A more comprehensive guide to these costs and increases can be found on the RSU 9 website.

At the April 25 meeting, the grand total had been adjusted to $41,710,668. Discussion among the board members over additional school nurses and substitute teachers were held as Director J. Wayne Kinney of Farmington asked Elkington if he could elaborate on ways to fill a vacancy in certain positions, such as the need for a second full-time nursing staff member.

“In talking with one of the members of the nursing team, one of the questions that they brought up was in reference to it,” Elkington stated. “They feel it’s so important to have a qualified nurse that they don’t take personal days to come to work sick, and part of the reason is that it’s sometimes very difficult for them to find a qualified replacement.”

Elkington presented an example of potentially hiring nurses from a nearby hospital as a substitute but conceded that it would not be advantageous for them, given the amount of money needed for the certification to perform the role as well as the pay.

“Before they even start, they’re like $300 to $350 in the hole before they even sub,” he continued, “and then also the amount that we pay for a nurse substitute, it may not be something that they would look upon as positive.”

Elkington followed his statement by saying if they wanted to pursue that option, they would need to look into ideas such as covering the cost for background checks and adjusting the pay to make it a more lucrative option.

Courtney Schools, a kindergarten teacher from Cape Cod Hill School [CCHS], appeared before the board to speak about the impact of not filling a third-grade teaching position that is being vacated due to retirement.

“The impact that this will have on students is that we’ll take our current teaching staff from 11 to 10,” Schools said. “Having us slow down to ten teachers has several effects. The first effect is that there is the potential of only having one teacher at one grade level.”

Schools also went on to say that not filling the position could create the need for another multi-grade teaching position to cover the needs of the student body. She elaborated further by saying that by expanding multi-grade teaching positions, it can divide teaching duties among the staff, which in turn could create inaccurate reports on how students are performing.

“When it comes time to report out on your students, you’re expected to know where your students are at,” Schools stated. “Well, if you have this teacher who’s teaching them math when you’re teaching literacy, you can’t accurately necessarily record 100% of where other students are, because you are having to be that amoeba and splitting yourself amongst the students.”

Elkington clarified the number of teaching positions, stating that they are going from 12 to 11 teaching positions, not 11 to 10. He went on to elaborate that he and the budget committee chose not to replace the position being vacated because CCHS has the smallest student/teacher ratio of all the schools in the district.

“I’m not going to disagree with [School’s comments],” he stated. “It’s gonna be a change, but every year we look at these numbers and that was the decision that was made.”

Director Janice David of Farmington took issue with Elkington’s argument.

“Why wouldn’t we want to reduce the number of students in all the other classes in all the other schools by having more teachers?” David asked. “If in fact, what this teacher is saying is, when you remove a teacher, it’s having an impact on students.”

Kinney asked what would be needed to add the teaching position back into the budget, which Elkington stated would mean adding to the overall budget.

Director Richard Ruhlin of Industry, who was also a part of the budget committee, spoke on behalf of the committee.

“I’m very sympathetic to the kindergarten teacher speaking on behalf of the school,” he stated. “We live in a world of finite resources, and some of the decisions made on this budget, none of them are easy.”

“It’s a brutal process,” he added. “Part of the discussion that took place during the instructional portion of it was indeed the student/teacher ratio, and Cape Cod Hill was indeed the lowest student/teacher ratio in the district. It’s a fact.”

David asked if there was anything that could be done to help with the student/teacher ratios across the district, to which Elkington stated that one possibility is altering bus routes and changing boundaries, which David believed would not solve the issue.

Seven motions were presented at the meeting. They are as follows:

• Set the 2023-24 Mt. Blue Regional School District budget amount at $41,710,668

• Set the 2023-24 Franklin County Adult Basic Education budget amount at $267,723

• Set the annual budget meeting for Tuesday, May 23, at 7 p.m. in the auditorium at Mt. Blue Campus.

• Set the budget validation referendum for Tuesday, June 13.

• Have open articles at the May 23 annual budget meeting.

• Add an additional article to the annual budget meeting warrant that allows authorization of the board to use all or part of any additional state subsidy to increase expenditures for school purposes in cost center categories approved by the board, increase the allocation of finances in a reserve fund approved by the board and/or decrease the local cost-share expectation as defined by Title 20-A., section 15671-A(1)(B) for local property taxpayers for funding public education as approved by the board.

• Add an additional article to the annual budget meeting warrant that allows authorization of the board to transfer amounts exceeding 5% of the total appropriation for any cost center to another cost center or among other cost centers for the 2023-24 fiscal year, provided that the transfers shall not be permitted to increase the authorized total school budget.

All motions were passed. The first and second motions had 15 votes in favor and one opposed [Charles Hinds]. The sixth motion, regarding additional articles, was passed with 14 votes in favor, two opposed Hinds, Alexander Creznic]. All other motions passed unanimously.

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