Deb Auger: The Franklin School District financial crisis is still ongoing

To The Daily Sun,

What does one do when faced with a financial crisis in one's personal life? The two options are to increase revenue or cut expenses.

The Franklin School District is no different. They have found themselves in a financial crisis despite decreasing enrollment of 8.6% over the last five years. Superintendent Dan LeGallo was quoted in "Heard Around New Hampshire" on May 19 answering the question, “With school enrollment falling drastically, costs should be going down, not up.”

He responded with, “I would say that I don’t necessarily disagree with that argument.” Now they are looking to the city to give an additional $2.25 million at the expense of taxpayers as one option.

The second option the school district has is to cut costs. The city doesn’t have the revenue to support this request. So the next option becomes cutting costs. The school board decided to present a tax cap budget to be viewed alongside the budget requesting the $2.25 million increase.

The tax cap budget cuts the athletics program, the art program at the elementary school, the adult education program and more. These particular cuts are designed to promote emotional responses from the taxpayer and most importantly the city council. According to Ed 306 some of these are mandated and cannot be cut.

The city council has asked the school district to present a tax cap budget. The school board now has the opportunity to rethink those original cuts made to provide a tax cut budget. The question now is: are there alternative cuts that can be made? Can pay raises be frozen? The district just implemented an 8% pay raise to teachers.

Deb Auger

Franklin