By Natalie De La Garza
Staff Writer
NEW SWEDEN — Explained to those in attendance at their May 15 meeting their hopes that it won’t come down to cutting staff, members of the New Sweden School Board approved a budget that included a workforce reduction.
“We’ve been really conscious of making sure we’re not requesting too much from the taxpayers this year, and [School Union 122 Superintendent Roland Caron] has been able to put together a budget that involves no additional local request above what the state requires the town to raise — but the downside in doing that is we’ve had to eliminate several staff positions because that’s the expensive part of the budget,” explained School Board Chair Debbie Eustis-Grandy. “We’ve nickle and dimed the budget for the last several years, and we’ve gotten to the point where what’s left is personnel — as much as we hate to do it.”
Positions facing elimination were not made available during the meeting.
Caron emphasized the board’s hopes that job cuts could be staved due to normal turnover, and further explained that the board did not want staff panicking that the board was going to eliminate their position.
“Our intent is to try to downsize the operation to the point where we’re matching the amount of students that we have in our schools, okay, not trying to keep the staff, but in order to do that at this phase in the game, we’ve got to talk like we have to eliminate those positions,” Caron said, adding that a notice to affected parties would be given before the budget was put before the town.
“What we’ve had to do is go with the worst-case scenario budget because we don’t have any numbers from Augusta yet, and we can’t second guess what [the legislature] is going to do,” Eustis-Grandy said.
The New Sweden’s School Board approved their budget, and met with members of the town’s Budget Committee on May 16.
The budget will go before voters during New Sweden’s Annual Town Meeting on Tuesday, June 18 at 7 p.m. at the school.
A development that faces additional budgetary scrutiny — the school’s roof is leaking.
“If we don’t fix it, it’s going to cost more the longer we put that off,” Caron said.
Discussion options to reduce the cost of the roof — like searching for a grant or even bundling New Sweden’s roofing needs in with the necessary roofing needed at their sister school in Woodland to possibly receive a lower cost for the two projects — the board tabled discussion on the roof.
While grant funds will be sought for the roof, New Sweden Principal Laurie Spooner updated the school board that grant funds will be received for a different project.
“The Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Grant that we had for a number of years but we did not receive this year — we are on the list to receive it again next year,” Spooner said, crediting the school’s head cook Melanie Lagasse with writing the successful grant application. Spooner also briefly re-capped the school’s speaking contest. “They did a pretty good job,” she said.
The next meeting of the New Sweden School Board has been moved from its June 6 date to Thursday, June 13; New Sweden’s eighth-grade graduation takes place on Thursday, June 6.
