The summer break has done little to quell the exodus of Pembroke schools employees from the district following last spring’s controversial school budget cut.

Five more employees have resigned since the start of the summer, with some citing the uncertainty in the district caused by last spring’s mass layoffs, according to School Board member Kerri Dean. Less than three weeks before the first day of school, the district of approximately 130 teachers has 17 unfilled positions, according to the school administrative unit’s job portal, though not all of them are for classroom teaching positions.

“We have not finished at the school level feeling the ripple effect of the budget” decision, board member Melanie Camelo said at a joint meeting of Pembroke’s school and select boards Wednesday. “I’m very worried about our school system.”

The unfilled positions have thrown high school course offerings into uncertainty and raised questions about available services at the middle and elementary schools. Five open teaching positions at Pembroke Academy – one in math, three in world language, and one in art – have prevented the high school from sending out course schedules to students and upended the world language program. Teachers are in the process of plotting contingency plans for certain courses that may be dropped, according to Dean.

Of the 17 openings – some of which appear to have been closed without being filled – 10 are at the high school, four are at the fifth- through eighth-grade Three Rivers School, and three are at the kindergarten through fourth-grade Pembroke Hill School. Overall, six are for classroom teaching positions and 10 are for paraprofessional, support services, or long-term substitute roles.

One of the employees who resigned was Three Rivers principal Bill McCarthy, who left after one year at the school due to “personal reasons,” according to Dean. An interim principal role went unfilled and Assistant Principal Katie Gagne will lead the school at the start of the school year.

The five summer resignations followed the departure of approximately 35 employees in the spring – 27 positions were eliminated and eight employees resigned – after Pembroke voters decided to trim $3 million, or roughly 10%, from the school board’s requested budget of $33 million.

Superintendent Patty Sherman, who was out of the office this week, declined to comment at the end of last school year about how she plans to allocate staffing for the upcoming school year. It is unclear whether any of the laid-off employees were subsequently re-hired following the resignations of others.

Dean said the mass layoffs have so negatively affected Pembroke’s reputation that hiring has become a significant challenge.

“Our town is not looked well upon right now, because we have all these teachers who are leaving, who are saying ‘I don’t want to work in Pembroke,’ ” Dean said. “Right now, there’s this black cloud for us.”

Teachers who had previously been interested in coming to Pembroke have expressed that they “don’t want to come for one year and then get axed next year,” Dean said.

Dean, who has a daughter at Pembroke Hill School, worries the consequences of this year’s staffing shortage could lead students to exit the Pembroke school system entirely.

“If we can’t provide them with the courses that they’re trying to take to be able to continue on into college, that doesn’t fare well for us,” she said in an interview. “Students who normally would choose Pembroke may choose to go to a different high school or charter high school.”

Enrollment numbers – which won’t become clear for a few months – affect how much money the school district receives in state funding.

The first day of school in Pembroke is Sept. 3.