Newfound voters say school funding formula needs study

BRISTOL — Voters at the Newfound Area School District’s deliberative session on Feb. 5 adopted an amendment that would create a committee to study changing the formula for assessing costs to the towns.

The amendment, proposed by Terry Murphy, a member of the Bridgewater selectboard, replaces the original petitioned warrant article that would have billed member towns in the same manner as most other cooperative school districts in the state: basing the tax assessment on the towns’ equalized valuation and average daily attendance.

Newfound’s current formula, established when the district formed in 1962, provides that all expenses except for those associated with transportation will be apportioned to the towns based upon average daily attendance, while transportation costs are apportioned according to each town’s utilization of bus services. It was a compromise designed to satisfy population centers where students could walk to school and outlying towns that needed bus transportation.

Murphy’s amendment would establish a committee comprising one representative of the Newfound Area School Board, one person from each member town, appointed by that town's selectboard, and one member from the Bridgewater-Hebron Village District, which maintains its own school building. The superintendent would serve as a non-voting ex officio member of the committee.

The new version of the article will now go on the March 8 district ballot.

In discussing the proposed operating budget, Superintendent Pierre Couture noted an error: They had included the first-year cost increase associated with the new teachers’ contract, but that figure also was included in a separate warrant article seeking approval of those costs. Voters amended the budget to $26,179,406, removing the extra $228,432.

They went on to approve the $228,432 appropriation for the new, three-year collective bargaining agreement between the district and the Newfound Teachers Union which begins in the 2022-23 academic year. The figure is based upon the estimated first-year increase in wages and benefits. The second year of the contract would bring an increase of $220,869, with $214.312 more in the third year.

Voters also agreed to place as much as $450,000 from the unexpended fund balance at the end of the year into the expendable trust fund for building maintenance.