CROYDON — Around 50 residents met Friday night to talk about the proposed $1.7 million school budget that was tossed out on March 12 and how to get it reinstated.
And after Friday night’s public hearing on the budget, the Croydon School Board discussed how the school district can educate its students next year at a cost of $800,000, the budget adopted last month. The view so far is that it can’t.
“One of the problems with the $800,000 budget,” said Beth Bierwirth, business administrator of the Croydon School District, “we will not have enough money in the given school year to cover expenses.” Even if the district is able to spend more than the $800,000 and run a deficit, it wouldn’t have sufficient cash flow to pay for basic needs, Bierwirth said.
So far, all of the models for education that School Board members have looked at would cost more than $800,000, with the least expensive options costing between $900,000 and $1 million. If the district had to, it could spend up to $1.5 million in the next school year with roughly the same tax impact as the original $1.7 million budget, board member Aaron McKeon said.
But if voters don’t overturn the $800,000 budget and the district goes on to spend $1.7 million as it had originally planned, then the impact of the deficit spending on the following year “would be huge,” School Board Chairwoman Jody Underwood said.
“We have to face the reality that we might get stuck with the $800,000 budget,” McKeon said.
The vast majority of the people at the meeting favored a proposal to vote on May 7 to bring back the $1.7 million plan, but not all of them did. Asked to raise their hands if they still supported the $1.7 million budget, the three school board members kept their hands down.
“I’ve seen a lot of areas where I’d like to see this number reduced,” said Underwood, a member of the Free State Project whose husband, Ian, proposed the $800,000 budget on March 12. Ian Underwood helped set up microphones for Friday’s meeting but left before it began.
Jody Underwood noted that at the May 7 meeting, scheduled for 9 a.m. at Camp Coniston, the $1.7 million proposal could still be amended before the required ballot vote.
School Board member Kevin Morris, who was elected in March, said he’d support the current year’s spending of around $1.6 million, but not the $1.7 million.
Jim Peschke, a former member of the School Board and a libertarian, supported the $800,000 plan. “The status quo died on March 12,” Peschke said, reading from written remarks. Townspeople also complained, he said, about the advent of school choice in Croydon, which started in 2014 and withstood a legal challenge from the state.
But other residents pointed out that the $800,000 budget makes school choice impossible and leaves students in grades 5 to 12 unsure of where they’ll be able to go to school next year.
“We had school choice,” former School Board member Tom Moore told the board. “What we have now is school choice for people who can afford it.”
The $800,000 budget would likely lock Croydon students into learning pods operated by Kai or Prenda, private companies recommended to Jody Underwood by state Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut.
Residents pointed out that the state has contracted with Prenda mainly to supplement, not supplant, a traditional public education, and board members acknowledged that they don’t yet know how the company’s learning pods would function.
“I have not yet learned anything that makes me comfortable with Prenda and Kai as options that work for Croydon,” Morris said. But with only $800,000 available, the “microschool” programs are “all we’ve got,” Morris said.
The School Board plans to meet again on April 13 and on April 18, when it hopes to be able to speak with representatives from Prenda and Kai.
Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.
