by Steve MacDonald<\/p>\n
Not long ago the Merrimack School board made an unprecedented move. In the shrinking shadow of declining enrollment, they decided to cut staff. That\u2019s right teachers. But in the intervening weeks since the plan was submitted there has been a change of heart. Call it \u201cBudget Cutter\u2019s Remorse.\u201d Or more likely, the union and the towns\u2019 grow government first lobby applied enough local pressure to convince the weak links on the school board to put the teachers back in the budget. <\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t end there. The school budget committee I am told was rife with hi-jinks designed to work the money back into the budget and get the teachers back on the payroll for next year. But by a vote of 7-6 that effort failed. I\u2019m still looking for more specifics, but it demonstrates a full court press to avoid any reductions in dues payers. <\/p>\n
The Merrimack school budget is already bursting compared to similar towns. The per pupil cost against the total budget was up over 14k the last time I looked. Comparable towns spend thousands less per student with similar results. So with an expected decline in student population, news of a staff cut was sweet music to my ears. But that\u2019s changed. <\/p>\n
The union and administration will be at the March 2nd School Board deliberative session with a mission to get those cuts erased, and keep the staff where it was, despite declining numbers of students. Proof that it\u2019s not about enrollment numbers, or class size, or the quality of education, it\u2019s about protecting union jobs taxpayers have to pay for, and leaning on the public\u2019s representatives to protect those jobs even in a declining economy. <\/p>\n
It is imperative that the residents of Merrimack get to the March 2nd meeting and make their voices heard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Steve MacDonald Not long ago the Merrimack School board made an unprecedented move. In the shrinking shadow of declining enrollment, they decided to cut staff. That\u2019s right teachers. But in the intervening weeks since the plan was submitted there has been a change of heart. Call it \u201cBudget Cutter\u2019s Remorse.\u201d Or more likely, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-town-meetings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}