A deeply divided Merrimack Valley community narrowly approved a nearly $2 million reduction to next year’s proposed school budget late Thursday night, plunging the 2,200-student district into a period of uncertainty.

As a result of the reduction, Superintendent Randy Wormald projected 26 positions and several extracurricular and special programs would be eliminated next year. Facing an April 15 deadline, the specific decisions on what to cut will come over the next five weeks.

The vote, which passed 267-250 shortly after 11 p.m., sets next year’s operating budget at $49.7 million, a 4% reduction from the $51.7 million the district had asked residents to approve. The approved budget is about $1 million more than the budget for the current school year.

For nearly four hours tensions playing out across the state surrounding school funding and property taxes were on display, as roughly 900 residents from the five communities that make up the district – Loudon, Boscawen, Penacook, Salisbury and Webster – packed the parquet and bleachers of the high school gymnasium.

Terese Bastarache, a hospice nurse, Republican activist, and mother of two children who attend Loudon Elementary School, emerged as the face of a well-orchestrated effort to reduce the budget.

“We have people who are living in their cars because they cannot afford to keep a roof over their head because of property taxes,” she said.

Bastarache, supported by a faction from Loudon, began by proposing a $4 million reduction, which was narrowly defeated.

Then she tried again, raising the amended budget by about $2 million.

The meeting at times devolved into a procedural fracas. Bastarache or members of her group repeatedly demanded time-consuming secret ballots, squabbled with the moderator over who arrived at the microphone first to bring forward motions, and appeared at one point to accuse a vote counter of fraud, a claim that was quickly retracted.

From both the standpoint of process and result, the meeting was unprecedented for the district, according to those who have attended for decades. Merrimack Valley voters had never before altered a proposed operating budget, according to facilities director Fred Reagan, who is in his 33rd year in the district.

The closest analog was Pembroke, Merrimack Valley’s bitter sports rival, where residents reduced the budget by $3 million last year.

“You saw what happened in Pembroke and we’re going to be in a similar situation because this is right around $2 million and we don’t have any fluff” in the proposed budget, Wormald said in an interview following the vote.

Proponents of the reduction had argued that the district didn’t deserve the money it asked for because of its mediocre test scores and $2 million over-expenditure.  

“Did I miss the memo that states you can fail at your duties and receive more compensation?” Loudon resident Shawn Kitson asked, addressing district administrators directly.

Elizabeth Duclos, a Penacook resident and Pembroke teacher who was honored as the state's teacher of year in 2024, warned that reducing the budget would do nothing to improve test scores.

“If you’re going to cut funding, you’re also cutting programs, so if you’re looking to raise test scores, the only way you’re going to do that is to give the district the money it needs to fund the programs to help those students,” she said.

Following the vote, Nick Gelinas, a high school junior from Loudon and the student representative to the school board, worried about what the reduction will mean for him and his classmates. His math teacher quit earlier this year, and Gelinas is now taking the course online, an experience he expects to repeat next year.

“It’s just going to be tough, I think,” he said.

Bastarache dismissed concerns that the reductions would affect students, calling for cuts at the administrative level. She supported a bill that would consolidate school administrative units in the state and argued that Wormald should forego part of his salary in order to retain teachers.

Though the budget reduction mirrored what occurred in Pembroke last year, the sentiment within the community contrasted sharply with the near-unanimous celebration of public education that occurred in the Kearsarge Regional School District earlier this year, when more than 90% of residents shot down a proposed budget cap.

The vote in Merimack Valley kicks off a string of annual meetings in school districts across the state over the next eight days. Organized efforts to replicate what happened are playing out in multiple communities, including in Pembroke and Weare.

In addition to the operating budget vote, residents elected four new representatives to Merrimack Valley’s 11-member school board Thursday. 

Stacie Jarvis of Boscawen, David Nesbitt of Webster, and Lorna Carlisle of Salisbury won three-year terms, while Tom Laliberte of Boscawen won a one-year term.

Board chair Tracy Bricchi of Penacook was the lone incumbent to run for re-election, which she won in an uncontested race.

The school district annual meeting was set to conclude on Friday night with a series of votes on additional warrant articles.

Jeremy Margolis can be contacted at jmargolis@cmonitor.com.