Hanover
School officials warned that those estimates were highly preliminary, but said they could result in an increase of 9 cents per $100 of property valuation in Norwich and 52 cents per $1,000 in Hanover.
That translates to $360 extra on a $400,000 house in Norwich and $208 more on a $400,000 home in Hanover.
The potential tax increases come in spite of more modest additions to each district’s spending budget, according to SAU 70 Business Administrator Jamie Teague. In Vermont, she said, recent volatility in the state budget has been a major contributor to local finance challenges.
“It’s been crazy,” she said of the past year’s budget process, which she began as a new employee after years in New Hampshire-only districts, “but a great learning experience.”
The Norwich School District, which administers the Marion Cross School, is forecasting spending increases of 1.85 percent, for a total of $5.7 million that stems in large part from long-delayed negotiations last year between the School Board and district employees.
Teachers and support staff reached agreements with the board this fall, months after the district adopted its 2017-18 budget. The base raises in those new two-year contracts — including a 1.4 percent increase for teachers in the first year — must retroactively be fit into the 2018-19 budget, Teague said.
Marion Cross teachers on average earned about $76,880 in the 2016-2017 school year, compared to the state average of $59,154, according to statistics from the Vermont Agency of Education.
On the revenue side, Norwich will receive smaller state educational aid payments as a result of new employee compensation expectations baked into the latest Vermont state budget. State officials are withholding about $35,000 in the current school year and $19,000 in 2018-19 to make up for savings Norwich was expected to obtain on employee health care plans during its most recent round of negotiations.
Over in the Hanover School District, which runs the Ray School and helps manage Richmond Middle School, spending could increase by 2.9 percent to $14.2 million, which Teague attributed to additions to the school’s English-language teaching staff, contracted pay raises for staff and smaller increases in special education spending.
The even higher projected tax increase comes as a result of a shift in Hanover’s assessment from the Dresden School District, whose costs are shared between the two towns based on their respective share of student enrollment.
“That, coupled with the fact that Hanover’s direct budget is up a little bit, is what’s driving the increase in Hanover’s tax rate,” Teague said in an interview Friday.
Dresden, which manages Hanover High School and shares authority over the Richmond School, is projected to spend $26.5 million, a 1.9 percent increase, in the upcoming school year.
“That’s very good, I think, on a budget that also has contractual increases in it,” Teague said, noting that increased tuition revenue from out-of-district students would hold actual budget-to-budget growth to about $88,000.
The roughly $500,000 spending change comes mostly from contractual and step-related increases to employee compensation, Teague said, including recent increases in requests for family benefits and salaries for special education.
The Dresden, Hanover and Norwich School Boards are scheduled to meet in the coming week to discuss these proposals.
The Dresden budget presentation is scheduled for Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the Hanover High library. Hanover School District’s meeting will be held the next day at 7 p.m. in the Ray School music room. Norwich’s review is on Thursday at 7 p.m. in the Marion Cross library.
Deliberations and public hearings will follow later in the month, with formal adoption of the budgets scheduled for the week of Jan. 22.
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or at 603-727-3242.