About 20 Weare parents and teachers met at the middle school recently to get up to speed on the impact the default budget will have on programs and staff in the district, and to brainstorm ideas for getting the word out on the upcoming re-vote on a revised budget proposal.

After voters said no to the $12.9 million 2008-09 budget the school district requested, a $12.4 million default budget went into effect.

This being the second default in a row, the district would operate on 2006-07 numbers to deal with inflated costs, including fuel, oil and health insurance increases, explained Supertintendent Christine Tyrie.

“We start with a very basic budget that meets our needs. That’s the proposed budget,” Tyrie said. “The default is not the minimum budget needed to run the school.”

The new proposed budget comes out to $12,703,776, exactly $240,000 more than the current default.

If it passes at the upcoming vote on Tuesday, June 3, the new budget would reinstate two teaching positions, one bus, and weekend and evening custodial coverage that were cut under the default.

The $12.4 million default budget translates to a tax rate increase of 25 cents per $1,000 of assessed value over the 2007- 08 school district rate. For a home assessed at $250,000, that’s an increase of $62.50 on the tax bill.

The new budget would add 27 cents to that rate, amounting to an increase of 52 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value. The same home assessed at $250,000 would see a $130 increase on the tax bill from last year.

“We are advocating for the students, and we need the people to reconsider,” Tyrie said at the Thursday, April 17, meeting. Even if the new budget passes, the school district still faces deep gashes in its staffing and programs.

The art teacher at Center Woods Elementary School, Roz Milano, and the French teacher at the middle school, June Rolon, will still be out of a job, along with two education paraprofessionals at the middle school, one weekend custodian, one special education teacher at Center Woods and one bus.

Milano, who was at the parent-teacher meeting, voiced concern that trimming unified arts in the schools would deeply impact students, and pointed out that unified arts are included as part of an adequate education in the New Hampshire Department of Education’s standards.

“I’ll get another job and move on, but it’s the children, that’s my concern,” Milano said.

Parents and educators at the meeting came up with several ideas for promoting the upcoming vote, including fliers, Web postings and setting up an online discussion group.

Most agreed that had this been done the first time around, the school district may not be where it currently stands.

School Board members in attendance said they did all they could to convey the impact a default would have to voters, but it fell on deaf ears.

“You don’t realize how much power you have,” said School Board member Paul Levandowski. “When it comes to another parent or another taxpayer,” Levandowski said, adding as school officials the community does not always see board members as such, “they’ll listen to you.”

The Weare Middle School’s operating costs were a new addition to the budget this year. Tyrie said there was a $176,990 shortfall in the buildings line coming into this year’s budget discussions.

In deciding on cuts, board members said, they looked at what would affect the core curricula – math, science, English and social studies – the least. “You can’t cut those things because then the whole system won’t function,” said Tyrie. Supply lines were intensely examined for savings, including some middle school science books in the budget that would replace the existing ones that are extremely dated.

“They don’t even have all the planets in them,” said Marge Burke, a board member, of the science texts.

“We can’t have one without the other. We have to have the necessary resources for the teachers,” she said. The unified arts are taking a hit this time around because those programs, including art, are the easiest to integrate into elementary curricula, Burke said.

“They’re not choices that we wanted to make,” Burke said, referring to the elimination of the arts at the elementary school and French at the middle school.

Rachel Cisto, 15, a freshman member of the French Honor Society at John Stark, said the elimination of French at the middle school level will affect the amount of students making it up to advanced placement French.

The entire French Honor Society, composed of about 50 members, sent individual letters to School Board Chairman Matt Thomas and some wrote to area newspapers, Cisto said.

“I think it’s important that they sort of notify the community that they’re going to lose all this,” Cisto said.

Dawn Haynes, a parent with children in the second and fourth grades, said through a trembling voice and moistened eyes that she is particularly upset about the loss of programs in light of the new middle school voters approved.

“I’m a little concerned that we have this big, beautiful building that we’re not going to fund,” she said. “It seems to be a ball that’s rolling.”

Tyrie agreed, saying she has never seen a school budget year this bad in her five years as superintendent for Weare. “In the past, we’ve had to make some really tough decisions, but we’ve moved on,” she said.

“This year is not like the other years,” she added. “It was such an ‘ah-ha’ moment this time around.”

Class sizes also came up as a concern, with first-grade teacher Nancy Pearson pointing out that removing staff will increase class sizes.

Haynes said her second-grader felt the effects when a secondgrade teacher was moved into the first grade to deal with an enrollment bubble in that year. “I don’t want her in a class that’s any greater than 20,” she said.

All agreed they need to keep the parent advocates group going for next year’s vote to encourage Weare voters to invest more in the students.

Currently, Weare spends the least amount per pupil in the state. The state average is around $10,000 per pupil, and Weare spends $7,345 per pupil, Tyrie said. Goffstown spends $8,425 per pupil and Henniker, which shares a school administrative unit with Weare, spends $11,441, Tyrie said.

“We need to stay together as a community before this happens again,” said Trisha Ober, one of the organizers of the parent advocates meeting.

The deliberative session for the vote will be held at Center Woods Elementary on Tuesday, May 6, at 7 p.m.