On Monday, the Jaffrey-Rindge School Board met to discuss the ramifications of last week’s deliberative session, in particular a $3 million cut to the proposed budget for the coming school year.

Residents at deliberative session voted in a secret ballot, 185-134, to reduce the proposed budget from $33.76 million to $30.76 million.

During Monday’s School Board meeting, the board updated the language on the warrant to reflect the new potential tax impact to Jaffrey and Rindge with the updated number. The estimate is taxes will increase by 80 cents per $1,000 of valuation for Jaffrey residents, and 18 cents per $1,000 for Rindge.

The board also took a new vote on their recommendation of the article. Prior to the deliberative session, there were five school members in favor of the budget, and one opposed. On Monday, that decision flipped, to five opposed and one recommending. School Board member Charlie Eicher was the minority in both votes.

Eicher said he didn’t feel he could support the School Board’s original budget proposal, as the district had been returning a significant amount in surplus at the end of the year. While Eicher said a $3 million cut is a “reach,” he could not support the prospect of the budget failing, which would put the default into place. The proposed default is $33.85 million, higher than the originally proposed budget. Eicher said if he couldn’t support the proposed budget, he could not support a higher number.

The rest of the board disagreed, saying that the cut could be disastrous for the district.

“Going forward with this $3 million cut is definitely a way to reduce taxes, but it’s also a way to destroy the future a lot of us have been working on for a long time,” said School Board member John McCarthy.

School Board member Christine Pressman said the cut was “shortsighted” and would be expensive to recover from, as in future years delayed purchases or repairs would only be more expensive.

“I’m going down fighting,” Pressman said, about attempting to rally community members to turn out and vote no on the budget.

The board discussed putting together a plan for what a $3 million cut would look like, and the potential impacts. Ultimately, they decided that board members and school administration members would return to a board meeting scheduled for Feb. 17 with a more fleshed-out plan, but the members did make some preliminary comments.

McCarthy pointed out that $3 million was equivalent to about 32 positions, and could result in the loss of difficult-to-fill positions.

Eicher said starting at the point of cutting positions was “very concerning,” saying that there were potential surplus areas to look at first. such as budgeting for all positions with full salary and benefits from July 1, even though the district is rarely fully staffed from the start of the fiscal year. He suggested speaking to the teacher’s unions to open up renegotiation of contract, to consider alternatives such as delaying a percentage increase in salary, dipping into capital reserves and a review of the budget to ask if every program was crucial for fundamentals of science, math and reading. Layoffs, Eicher said, was “the wrong way to start.”

Pressman said there were a lot of “maybes” in cutting based on potentially unfilled positions for a portion of the year, and added that there is more to graduating than just science, math and reading, particularly for students seeking a post-secondary education.

“A college wants a well-rounded student, and it’s our job to grow those students,” Pressman said.

Superintendent Reuben Duncan said that in a previous year, when the district went into default, the district was able to avoid catastrophic cuts by switching to a block schedule, which created some efficiencies, and eliminating positions based on attrition. He said making another structural change like that wasn’t viable in this case.

“It will mean positions. It will mean courses. It is the equivalent of 30-plus positions, but that doesn’t mean that’s what you would end up doing – that’s an entire school,” Duncan said. He said whatever the board decided, it should be a sustainable cut, something that could carry forward.

“I think we have a lot of really poor options to look at,” said School Board Chair Chris Ratcliffe.

The board agreed to meet again Feb. 17, after receiving data and recommendations from school administrators, to discuss a more concrete plan for potential cuts.

Ashley Saari can be reached at 603-924-7172, Ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on X @AshleySaariMLT.