John Sellers: Stay home Saturday and your school taxes will likely go up

To The Daily Sun,

The Newfound School District Deliberative Session is this Saturday January 30, at 10 a.m. at the Newfound Regional High School. As a voter and taxpayer, you should be there to have a say in a budget that could be increased by $1,300,000 higher than last year.

Why does the district need almost 300 employees for the declining 1,126 student population? Why does the district need seven building which include four Elementary schools, Middle and High Schools and the SAU office?

There was a discussion at a Budget Committee meeting of combining Elementary Schools would only save about $100,000 per year. I am not convinced this is the true saving. Maybe an impartial study should be conducted not just on the combining a school but a district wide study to see if and where savings could be achieved.

Lastly, the SAU chose to remove all sports and field trips from the 2021-22 budget to get the parents all worked up, which they succeeded, and those parents have united in coming to the Deliberative Session to raise the proposed budget to maybe exceed the 1.3 million default budget.

If you stay home this Saturday, just know your school taxes are going up again and for Bristol taxpayers it could cost you about eighty cents per thousand more.

John Sellers

Bristol