ANOTHER BLOCKBUSTER TEACHER CONTRACT

School Board & Budget Committee Just Couldn't Say NO !

School Board & Budget Committee Recommended Approval of $23+ MILLION SCHOOL BUDGET

Where do the members of these Boards come from anyway? We know them to be residents of Epping; surely they are also taxpayers here...right? What were they thinking when they recommended approval of this year’s teacher contract? What time warp do they live in? Based upon their failure to seek a fair and equitable Teacher Contract, Epping voters should have brought this motley crew to their senses...but the number of voters here in town that believes money grows on trees, now out number those that have been trying to convince our SAU14 administration and employees their spending habits are unsustainable. For goodness sake, the country is in an economic downturn; inflation has reached a 41-year high. According to the U.S. Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the average price of food in the United States has increased 10.1% in the 12 months ending January 2023. That post followed a separate announcement of an annual (2022) inflation rate of 10.4%. It seems the members of the School Board and Budget Committee must be financially well insulated from the impact of inflation. But, grocery shopping is not the entire story. According to the NH Department of Energy website, the average price of heating oil this past March was $4.45/gal, whereas the average price of propane came in at $3.73/gal. Those prices had most taxpayers digging into their savings account to make ends meet this past winter and early spring...while turning their thermostats down to 60 degrees to save money. Are Epping taxpayers going to be obligated again this coming winter to turn their thermostats DOWN EVEN FURTHER in order to eke out the money to pay for the teachers’ contract? 

What were you being asked to approve this past March 14th? A mere $753,631.00 to pay for a 2-year contract. Chump change right? Still had a few dollars left in your pocket? Didn't know what to do with it? No worries; the School Board easily took care of that for you. On top of the teacher contract, they also asked you to approve an additional $22,596,832 for the 2023/24 school year, a trifling $1,820,404 over last year’s operating budget with more than 67% going towards salaries and benefits leaving but 33% to support 891 students in the Epping School system. An overall total of $23,350,463 of funding on the March 14, 2023 ballot.

As for the $400,000 that the School Board had tucked away in School Ballot Articles 4 & 5 it's our opinion there was deceptive messaging used on those articles! There was the wording: "No amount to be raised from additional taxation,” don’t be fooled. Be informed; that is YOUR money; it was money taken from you last year to fund the 2022/23 school year. If those articles were to have failed to pass, that money should have came back to the Town, to reduce taxes. It appears the pencil pushers who put these budgets together ignored the state of our current economy? Have they no conscience?    

In Taking A Closer Look...The Warrant Article for the teacher contract usually comes up every three years, but last year it did not pass. So, this year the warrant article was for two years. Did the Epping School Board and the Epping Teachers Association try to make up for the contract not passing last year? In order to determine this, a comparison to the amounts in the warrant article presented in March of 2022 is necessary. Here are those amounts:

Fiscal Year

Estimated Increase

2022-2023    $354,825.00

2023-2024    $258,528.00

2024-2025    $297,634.00 

The total for these three years is $910,987. The total for the then proposed 2-year contract above is $753,631. One might expect to see the new contract add up to around $607,325 which is two-thirds of the total of the three years on the warrant article last year. However, the total of the new, then proposed two-year contract is $753,631, which is 83% of the total from last year’s proposed contract.

Also, keep in mind that $577,593 of the $1,321,395 in COVID Relief Funds has been allocated to pay staff in our school district in addition to their salaries. Some of this money has already been paid and the rest will be paid between now and 9/30/24. So, teachers will benefit much more from this new contract than the contract you voted to reject last year. When the second year of this contract kicks in, it will have added another $0.94 to your tax rate. 

What are members of our boards saying?

In the last 3 to 4 years nearly every member of the Budget Committee, at one point or another, has stated their concerns with the growth of the school district budget. The statements are either about the per pupil costs in the district or whether or not we should send our High School students to a neighboring town. For example, during the December 15, 2021 Budget Committee meeting Jen Chapman said “My opinion is, five years from now, if we’re not a co-op school we’re going to be in serious trouble.” A few minutes later the Chair of the Budget Committee, Michael Charkowski stated that “It seems to me the answer, to Jen’s point…you know… you look out five years, is either we’ve got to get the enrollment up, and I’m talking mostly about the High School here, or we need to close down the High School and tuition the kids out.”

What is the Problem?

• Are there too many administrators?
• Do we have too many classes with very small numbers of students?
• Do we have too few students to warrant operating a High School?
• Are the School Board and Budget Committee playing games with the proposed budget each year?