It was smooth sailing at Hopkinton’s annual school district meeting Saturday, as residents easily approved the school budget and every item on the warrant.
Attendees gathered in the gymnasium at Hopkinton Middle High School to vote on the $22 million school budget and several proposals to set money aside into different trust funds for use in the future.
The school budget of $22,553,797 passed with little opposition. It carried a 2.6% increase from the current school budget of $21,973,387. The main drivers of the budget increase were employee health insurance, higher contributions to the state retirement system and a payment on a building project bond, board member Norm Goupil told attendees Saturday.
Hopkinton easily approved a three-year contract with the Hopkinton Education Association (representing teachers, school nurses and counselors) that increases what the district spends on salary and benefits by $393,082 next year, $364,498 the year after and $350,189 the year after. School Board member Andrea Folsom said one of the board’s goals in contract negotiations was to keep their district competitive and keep teachers in the district.
“We want to keep our current staff and we want to be able to train attain, attract and retain staff in the future,” Folsom said. “We know that one of the consequences of this pandemic is the fact that across the country and in New Hampshire, teachers are choosing to leave the profession at a very high rate. We’ve been lucky enough not to be affected by that at this time in Hopkinton, but we know that it’s harder than ever to recruit new teachers into this profession.”
A two-year contract with the Hopkinton Educational Support Staff (representing office staff, food service staff, library media staff and student support staff) also passed easily, which increases what the district spends on salary and benefits by $122,889 next year and $60,818 the year after. School board chair Jim O’Brien said the board’s goal with that contract was to improve health benefits for support staff, to make it on par with that of other employees.
“We felt it was really important to be equitable for all employees to provide the same health benefits to all of our employees,” O’Brien said. “…We felt that making this change on health benefits, one, is the right thing to do as an employer, and two, it’s going to help keep our staff and attract quality staff to our districts.”
Hopkinton residents voted in favor of adding $200,000 to the district’s building repair and maintenance fund for future projects to be completed in upcoming years. According to the district’s capital improvement plans, projects include refrigerator and freezer replacements, HVAC upgrades, boiler replacements and roof replacements. While originally $100,000 of that fund was supposed to be raised through taxation, O’Brien proposed an amendment at the meeting to use surplus from the undesignated fund balance instead, at no cost to the taxpayers, which was accepted by voters.
“With our new focus on moving to long-term planning, we’re looking to invest more into our (capital improvement projects), for both required maintenance – whether it’s roofs, et cetera – as well as potentially looking to do more proactive maintenance so that we can move away from having huge bulk of deferred maintenance on schools or for our large bond in the future,” said school board member Dulcie Madden Lipoma.
Meeting attendees also established a new trust fund with $200,000 Saturday, specifically for employee benefits. The district’s healthcare provider HealthTrust told school board members in November that there were unexpected savings on the district’s healthcare plan due to fewer employees seeking medical care during the COVID-19 pandemic. Board member Rob Nadeau said they don’t expect similar savings in the future, so the board wants the money set aside to help fund health benefits in the future if prices should soar.
A proposal to add $100,000 to a special education trust fund also passed on Saturday, to cover unexpected future costs.
“Special education can be one of our costs that can sneak up on us very, very quickly,” Nadeau said. “A new student comes to town and needs a placement, that can make managing what we had thought was in our budget very, very difficult.”
Voters also passed a proposal t o add $25,000 to a technology trust fund in case it’s needed in the future.