Lyme
By a secret-ballot vote of 82-67 on Saturday in the Lyme School gymnasium, voters added $56,749 to the 2018-2019 school budget to expand the current half-day program. While state law doesn’t require the Lyme School Board to do so, chairwoman Elizabeth Glenshaw said after the meeting that she and her colleagues will take the hint.
“It’s clearly a priority of the community,” Glenshaw, one of five board members who had voted not to endorse the warrant article proposed by a group of parents. “If there’s some kind of catastrophe where we need money from somewhere else to cover the expense, of course we’d have to look at all our finances. Barring that, obviously this was the will of the community.”
The vote, which makes Lyme the final Valley town to commit to expanding its kindergarten program beyond lunchtime to the end of the school day, comes a year after residents at the district meeting rejected a similar proposal, 148-79, and two years after a no vote of 68-62.
Saturday’s decision, as well as a near-unanimous voice vote for the School Board’s operating budget of $6.98 million, also came two days after the originally scheduled annual meeting, which district moderator William Waste postponed because of the snowstorm that blew through the region on Wednesday night and Thursday.
“It’s hard to say how much of a difference that might have made,” said Jonathan Vogel, leader of the group of parents that petitioned to put the question on the warrant. “I think the camps on both sides lost some turnout because of the change of date.”
In making the group’s case before the vote, Vogel pointed to the $1,100 per student that the New Hampshire Department of Education is granting to school districts that adopt full-time kindergarten, on top of the aid the state provides annually to schools to meet standards of educational adequacy. With at least 20 students expected to reach kindergarten age this year, he estimated, those grants would lower the amount that Lyme’s property taxpayers would cover to between $34,000 and $39,000.
“With the state money factored in, the cost to us will be something like $20 a person or $40 a family,” said John Gartner, whose youngest child is approaching kindergarten age. “We’re talking about dinner out or a couple of six packs here.”
In return for that investment, Vogel and other advocates contended, teachers would be able to spend more time preparing students for the academic and social rigors of elementary school, and to catch early on some of the mental, physical and emotional problems that might go undetected until later.
“Our whole society is concerned with the security of our children, with their anxiety,” Phyllis Greenway, grandmother of 11 and great-grandmother of 10, said in support of full-day kindergarten. “This is at the beginning of life, when so much is formed.”
Others cited the advantages of full-time kindergarten for families in which the parents struggle to find supervision for their kindergartners in the afternoon.
“We’re creating an incredible amount of value and stress-relief for young families,” resident James Graham said.
School Board vice chairman Jay Davis said that in voting against a board endorsement of the full-day proposal, neither he nor his four colleagues questioned the intangible values of such a program. Rather, he added, they balanced the school’s needs as a whole, from kindergarten through grade 8, and also kept in mind that Lyme’s municipal expenses would be rising in part because of the need to repair roads damaged in summer storms.
“I spoke with one parent who is in favor who said, ‘It’s the kind of thing you can’t put a price on,’ ” Davis recalled. “Well, we have to put a price on things. In this climate this year (full-day kindergarten) wasn’t a high enough priority for us among our other priorities. … There are a lot of priorities that we would love to be funding this year.”
In the event that voters again rejected a full-day program, the School Board had posted on the warrant articles proposing to raise $15,000 in property taxes to start a capital reserve fund for an after-kindergarten program, with the rest of the money coming from parents choosing to enroll their kids in kindergarten. But advocates of the broader program argued that such a system would limit it the less-ambitious one to families more able to afford it.
“It’s an equity and justice issue,” said Cybele Merrick, the lone member of the school budget committee to endorse the full-K warrant article. “We owe it to our children.”
The addition of full-day kindergarten pushes the overall operating budget, which balance of which voters approved with little debate, just over $7 million.
Before the budget vote, the gathering approved a separate warrant article to raise $180,000 — paid for in installments over five years, $20,512 the first year — for repairs to the school’s roof.
Between the budget decision and the kindergarten decision, voters approved the school district’s request to transfer part of any surplus from the current year’s budget into three different funds. In order of priority, $45,000 would go into the account for covering expenses from higher-than-expected enrollment.
If enough surplus remains after that, $50,000 would go into a trust fund for tuition for additional Lyme students attending area high schools. As of Oct. 1, 54 Lyme residents were attending Hanover High, 20 Thetford Academy, 17 St. Johnsbury Academy and two Hartford High.
Voters also empowered the district to use any additional surplus to plow $25,000 into a capital reserve fund for additional special-education costs.
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com or 603-727-3304.