A year ago, the Chichester school board let a teacher go. It wasn’t an easy call, but with a diminshed seventh grade class, the board couldn’t justify the extra staff. Two teachers for the seventh grade became one.
Then came the kindergartners. A larger-than-expected wave of students entering the youngest grade this year – 30 in all – overwhelmed the teaching staff and prompted the board to rethink its decision.
This year, the board had a new ask for voters at the school’s annual budget session: funding for two more teaching positions. One position would be filled only if needed – a kindergarten teacher to help alleviate potentially large class sizes down the road. The other would be a restoration of the middle school position cut last year.
Residents approved both positions at the Chichester school meeting Saturday, 62-41, as part of a $6.4 million budget that will carry a three percent property tax increase.
The annual budget featured money to create a school band – about $7,000 to add a half day a week to the music teacher position to build the program. That program would initially be available for fifth- and sixth-grade students but would eventually be scaled up to seventh -and eighth-grades over two years, according to school board chairman Ben Brown.
Other approved items included a $13,000 spending increase to replace Chromebook laptops and bring the school up to a goal of providing one laptop per student. And they contained salary increases of 2.5 percent for non-certified staff, and a 6.8 percent raise for the school principal, from $84,245 to $90,000.
Brown said the changes would help keep up the school’s performance; students have consistently tested above the state average in recent years. The band program would give students new engagement with music and set them up for success in high school, he argued.
The principal’s raise, Brown added, is necessary to bring that salary rate up to the regional average.
And funding the middle school would allow the class sizes, many of which near the state recommended limit of 30, to be managed appropriately, Brown said.
“Having six teachers essentially allow us to achieve our competency based education program,” said Brown. “It gives us the opportunity to allow these students and their teachers to do the best job they can.”
Not all in the room were happy about it. Thomas Hoale, for one, questioned why the budget a potential position for the kindergarten.
The increased tax rate, which is projected to add about $94 a year for a home valued at $200,000, would hit some of the older residents struggling on Social Security, Hoale said.
And he pointed to a $400,000 budget surplus – money that Brown said was being set aside in case of contingencies in the final months of the school year – as evidence the tax increases were unnecessary.
“They take all their money and they run with it,” said Hoale “It’s ridiculous how much money they spend here.”
But others praised the boost in programs.
Ella Hemeon knows this year’s mega-Kindergarten intimately: she has two children of her own in the class. Chichester’s school, with its small class sizes and strong reputation, is one reason she moved to the town six and a half years ago. Now that her kids are enrolled, Hemeon feels a closer bond to the town than before, she said.
“There’s just so much – you want to come to all of the events and you want to be part of the community,” she said.