Robin McAfee got up from her chair and walked past row after row of empty seats until she reached the microphone at the front of the Allenstown Community School’s gym.
The turnout at the school district’s special deliberative session on Thursday night told its own story. Six school district officials and four budget committee members sat before roughly 20 voters, ready to answer questions and make the case for contracts covering teachers, paraprofessionals and other school staff, versions of which voters rejected just four months earlier.
For McAfee, the timing of the meeting didn’t make sense.
“I support the school system. My children have gone through the Allenstown school system and have been very successful,” McAfee said. “But I just feel like voters might think that you are trying to get something by because it was voted down originally and now you are coming back during the summer, when a lot of people are going on vacations and aren’t available.”
School district officials said that the timing wasn’t a matter of choice. Before any revised contract can go before voters again, it has to follow a set process that includes returning to the table to renegotiate with the paraprofessionals’ and teachers’ associations, then carrying the revised terms through the budget committee and noticing public hearings.
The proposed contracts failed by narrow margins in March. Voters rejected the teachers’ contract 295 to 263 and turned down the paraprofessionals’ contract 290 to 276.
Jack Finley, superintendent of the Allenstown, Chichester and Epsom school districts, said the cost of the election result is already showing up in Allenstown’s schools.
The school district has lost 10 teachers and 4 support staff since March, as it has operated without the ability to offer raises, Finley said, and hiring has become an uphill battle.
“We brought people to interview, then we say, “Okay, we want to have you,’ and I meet with them, and I’m able to offer them the salary. They’d then reconsider, and then they don’t move forward,” Finley said. “That’s happened to us a number of times. So they’re taking offers from different schools, and unfortunately, Allenstown is not selected.”
The school district has reduced the amount it’s asking taxpayers to fund for both contracts since March. It was originally asking $99,535 for the paraprofessional contract and is now asking for $44,930; for teachers, it was originally asking $174,263 and is now asking for $163,628.
“The board tried to come up with something that was going to be palatable, but still give some support to staff,” Finley said.
The proposed tax rate increase is 8 cents per $1,000 of property value for the paraprofessional contract, and 31 cents per $1,000 of property value for the teachers’ contract.
Voting on these two warrant articles will take place on August 25 between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. at the Old Allenstown Elementary School on 30 Main Street.
Residents at the meeting, including McAfee, agreed that school staff and teachers deserved to be paid more, but rising gas prices and grocery costs continue to pinch their budgets.
Keith Klawes, Allenstown’s school board chair, said it’s on the state legislature to better fund education and it is representatives’ responsibility to show up to these meetings, so they can face residents’ questions.
“We can only control so much of the local level that comes back to the taxpayers,” he said. “Our state legislatures need to fund education properly and give us some money that we need, so we don’t have this big burden.”
