Great Salt Bay Community School parents say budget cuts in effect this school year are having a negative impact on the education of their children.
Meanwhile, some members of the Great Salt Bay School Committee had hoped to use an extra salary in the budget to restore some of the programs.
However, because the school has almost $100,000 less of a fund beginning balance – the surplus carried from the previous budget to the present – than budgeted, it actually has less money to spend, not more.
GSB parents expressed some of their concerns at a Great Salt Bay School Committee workshop Jan. 8.
Cuts to the gifted-and-talented program, educational technician positions and experiential learning programs topped the list of complaints.
A program at Kieve-Wavus Education provides an important and often “life-changing” experience for students, especially students who might not otherwise have an opportunity to participate in a similar program, Jenny Mayher, of Newcastle, said.
Dr. Tim Goltz, a family physician who lives and practices in Damariscotta, also advocated for Kieve and similar programs.
“I think the value of having outdoors education is just critical for our kids, both for their physical well-being and their emotional well-being,” Goltz said.
Lili Pugh, of Alna, said her son, who excels in math, was able to work one-on-one with gifted-and-talented teacher Alison Macmillan last year. Now, Macmillan only works 2 1/2 days a week.
“Even though he’s up a grade, doing math at the highest level at that next grade, he’s still finding it just busy work, so he’s really lost now with the half-time gifted-and-talented teacher,” Pugh said.
Alna has school choice, so parents like Pugh and Ed Thelander have the option to move their kids – and the tuition Alna pays GSB – into another school.
“Please make sure (GSB is) still a gem because of the leadership, not just because of the community,” Thelander said. “Make it a gem because of the leadership of the school board and the school, not in spite of it.”
“We still want to continue to choose Great Salt Bay for our kids,” Thelander said.
Great Salt Bay and its unique programs attract many families to settle in the area, Doug Straus, of Newcastle, said.
“The school is special,” Straus said. “It needs to stay special to help support the community as a whole.”
Later, at the regular school committee meeting, committee members Stephanie Nelson, of Newcastle, and Bill Thomas, of Bremen, expressed frustration with their aborted effort to reverse some of the cuts.
The budget counts the salary of a school employee twice, a mistake that means the school has approximately $50,000 in unanticipated revenue.
Nelson and Thomas hoped to use the salary to restore programs. The revenue shortfall, however, derailed the effort.
The 2013-2014 budget includes $133,719 as the balance the school expected to have left over at the end of the previous fiscal year.
A reduction in the state money the school receives, a state-mandated change in end-of-year accounting practices, and a series of unexpected expenses combined to reduce the figure to $36,394, according to AOS 93 Superintendent Steve Bailey.
“We have $100,000 less in revenue to spend than we thought we did,” Thomas said.
“Our beginning fund balance of $133,000 really was not accurate in any way,” Nelson said. “We missed the mark on that, and that is affecting us this year.”
“This year, when we go to put together our budget, we need to be very, very conservative with what our fund beginning balance is, because it puts us in a hole right away,” Nelson said.
