Croydon meeting passes school budget with help of large turnout

By ALEX HANSON

Valley News Staff Writer

Published: 03-20-2023 11:21 AM

CROYDON — Avoiding a repeat of last year, voters here turned out in relatively large numbers Saturday to approve the annual school budget.

But that doesn’t mean there weren’t a few proposals at the Croydon School District Meeting to alter the budget. Ian Underwood pitched a $700,000 budget increase that would have brought the total spending package to over $2.4 million. It was Underwood, a supporter of the Libertarian Free State Project, who last year proposed reducing the district’s budget from $1.7 million to $800,000, which was adopted by a vote of 20-14, then overturned in May by a vote of 377-2.

This year, the 124 voters present at the town’s fire station soundly rejected his $700,000 increase.

“I think everyone here remembers what happens with Ian’s ideas,” Amanda Leslie, who helped lead the charge to restore the budget a year ago, said on Saturday. She urged voters to reject his plan and “proceed with a rational conversation about the budget proposal from the School Board.”

The essence of Underwood’s suggestion was that the state law (RSA 193-H:2) requires that “schools shall ensure that all pupils are performing at the proficient level or above on the statewide assessment.” The budget doesn’t have a plan for that, Underwood said, which he called “reckless and irresponsible.” He argued that less than half of Croydon students, who attend Croydon Village School through fourth grade, are attaining proficiency in reading.

To fix it, he proposed hiring 10 full-time reading specialists, at a cost of $70,000 each, a $700,000 increase to the School Board’s $1.7 million budget.

After his idea was voted down, Jim Peschke, a former School Board member and, like Underwood, a Libertarian, proposed to cut the budget to a little under $1.6 million. He said the district should budget less for tuition for students in grades five to 12 and, based on his math, the district had budgeted too much for wage increases.

School officials explained that they budget conservatively for tuition and that Peschke’s math was flawed.

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“I’m not surprised by the turnout here,” Peschke said, calling it “a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of controlling spending.”

Voters rejected his proposal, then approved the School Board’s budget, which has almost exactly the same bottom line as the current year’s.

The only other major subject of discussion was the district’s Strategic Planning Committee, which is trying to plan deliberately for the district’s future while proposals from Free State Project adherents take up a chunk of the short-term budget debate. In addition to Underwood’s written statement, copies of which were available along with the district’s budget presentation, School Board Chairwoman Jody Underwood, Ian’s wife, wrote a lengthy statement in the town report, unsigned by other board members, calling the district’s current model “an unsustainable status quo.”

“I think a lot of us came in expecting some shenanigans, and we certainly weren’t disappointed,” said Leslie, who’s a member of the Strategic Planning Committee and a teacher at Kearsarge Regional High School.

The meeting also marked the end of Jody Underwood’s 13 years on the School Board, during which she helped usher in school choice. Angi Beaulieu, her former ally on the board, ousted her by a vote of 229-36. The statements from the two Underwoods suggest they will continue to exert an influence on education, both in Croydon and the state.

“Up until this last year, it was good,” Jody Underwood said of her time on the School Board. Peschke recognized her efforts, particularly in the school choice battle, before the meeting ended.

While school choice was a success, Croydon now finds itself in a bind, where it can’t control the cost of tuition. The district has no bargaining power, Underwood and Peschke both noted. Tuition at Newport schools rose 11% in the current year, and is budgeted to rise 8% next year. Even so, Croydon maintains a much lower property tax rate than surrounding towns.

Earlier Saturday, Croydon voters approved all but one article on the Town Meeting warrant, rejecting a petitioned proposal to spend $80,000 on contracted police services.

In addition to approving a municipal budget of $549,000, they also doubled the $10,000 funding request from the volunteer fire department, and agree to spend $10,000 to record municipal meetings, a project that resident Ed Spiker has done on a volunteer basis for the past year. Voters also doubled the veterans tax credit, raising it to $500 a year.

Selectboard Chairman Russell Edwards, a Chelsea native who moved to Croydon some years ago, is stepping down. Spiker won the election to replace him last Tuesday.

The morning meeting, held in Town Hall, was standing room only, with 111 of Croydon’s 659 registered voters in attendance, a turnout of nearly 17%. The 124 voters at the afternoon school meeting, held in the fire station, were nearly 19% of the checklist.

Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.

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