ORCSD FY27 Budget Increased $519K in Agonizing Deliberative Session

School board proposed cuts

At the ORCSD Deliberative Session yesterday, ORMS math interventionist and former board member Krista Butts* gave an impassioned appeal to undo the board's proposed cut of the three interventionists, and Amanda Hassan (?) argued against the nurse cut. In response, the citizens overwhelmingly approved State Rep and former board member Al Howland's motion to increase the operating budget by $519K.  

The amended budget and a dozen other warrant articles will be voted on by the citizenry of the three towns on election day, Tuesday, March 10, 2026.  Should the budget pass as it always has, the board is free to do what it wants with the extra money, including just giving it back to the taxpayers at the end of the year. 

My understanding is the administration was laying off the two teachers because they no longer needed them, due to the changes in the number of students at each grade. The students aren't really going anywhere and the class size guidelines have not changed, so the district will just hire new teachers for the grades that need them. This is a big part of what we pay the district administration to do. While the board should give due weight to the relatively clear intent of the voters at DS, they are still obligated to run the district in a responsible manner. Stay tuned; we'll see what happens.

It took four and a half hours to go through most of the 13 warrant articles (ballot questions), including four added by citizen petition.  Attempts were made to amend five or six of the warrant articles, and a few of the amendments passed.

The queue for Durham voters went around the room

We knew it was going to be a long meeting when it took about 45 minutes to check in all the Durham folks.  I have no idea why the attendees were disproportionately from Durham. I initially guessed maybe they were angry about their taxes going up. Perhaps they were erroneously told there would be snacks.  They turned out to be most of the substantial majorities that voted for more spending by the district, and voted against the various attempts to restrict spending in the district.  [That's my glib characterization of the four citizen petition articles, apparently mistaken: please see the comment below.]

Kenneth Stuff attempted to modify the $9.5M elementary school bond for construction project, with an amendment changing the Article 3 bond amount to $3.9M.  The proposers had a justification for this number, see below.  The board implied if it passed, this would waste the half million dollars already spent on planning, and at minimum delay the project, perhaps forever.  Colin Butler* had the requisite five signatures for a secret ballot, which took forever to collect and count; that would be nice to fix.  The amendment failed with 42 (15%) in favor and 237 (85%) against.  I'm having flashbacks to the similar fate I suffered at the 2022 DS.

Citizen Petitioners

Articles 10 through 13 are the four citizen petitions, presented by a group of four people: Rita Mason, Eric Mason, Daniel Day, and Colin Butler. Kenneth Stuff and Peter Johnson also commented in support.

Daniel Day is son of board member and former chair Denise Day, who is retiring after 12 years of service, thanks Denise! I fondly remember then recent graduate Daniel Day from a school board meeting around 13 years ago where he said he'd be fired from his job had he tweeted the stuff board member Kach had.

A few of the amendments were by the proposers to fix defects in the language to accord with state law.  Those were uniformly thwarted by the voters, presumably on the theory that an article cannot be enacted even if passed if it does not obey state law.  It was a tough crowd; the group learned the hard way to do their homework and get the wording right the first time. 

Amendments passed effectively neutering Article 12 (tax cap) and Article 13 (performance audit).  Article 10 (statutory budget committee) remains intact.  Article 11 (end retaining of fund balance) attempts to end the power the voters granted to the board to divert some appropriated but unspent money at school year end into various funds.  Instead, if passed, the unspent funds will be used to offset next year's taxes. This was one of the articles where the voters prevented a language fix; not sure of the consequences if it passes.

The presenting group was not uniformly against all spending; Mr. Butler was the one who seconded the motion to add back the $519K.   

Kudos to moderator Michael Williams, who did an excellent job keeping this unwieldy meeting moving forward.  One suggestion: while counting secret ballots in public, it is best not to have one of the counters appearing to stick a few in her pocket. These turned out to be non-ballots in the ballot box, voter cards of frustrated voters who had left in search of a shorter meeting. Still, appearance is important.

The district is playing some games as well.  Article 9 asks the voters to raise and appropriate $0 for funding ORCSD Open Enrollment.  The money would be used to pay tuition for students from the district to attend other schools.  The district believes the $0 appropriation will prevent the state from imposing the cost on us later.

The meeting began with a presentation of the Distinguished Service Award.  Congratulations to 2026 ORCSD Distinguished Service Award winner Daniel Couture, who was honored for his many years of volunteer service with our ORCSD F.I.R.S.T. Robotics program.

This is the first time I've written about the district since last March, so let's not stretch it out.  Future topics include: the school board election, the elementary school project, the various contracts and funds, and the four citizen petitions.  No need to do it all today; I've have another meeting report to write, for my actual job. Talk to you all soon.

*Full disclosure: (1) Krista Butts and I are the ORMS MATHCOUNTS co-coaches; the Seacoast Regional Competition is at UNH this Saturday, go Bobcats!  (2) I've exchanged a few texts with Colin Butler about what I thought about the warrant articles and DS procedures, as I would with be happy to with anyone interested in participating in our school governance.  

References:

Warrant as proposed 

District Handout at DS

District Slides at DS

YouTube of DS

Elementary School Project

I asked Colin Butler to comment on this article. He shared it with Daniel Day who straightened me out when I said he worked for Rite Aid; sorry about that, Daniel, I've corrected the post. Colin also helped me with some names, which I've incorporated above.  He further replied:

To provide some context on the $3.9M figure: it wasn't an arbitrary number intended to stall the project. It was the result of an extensive analysis by [name omitted] who took the administration’s answers on 'needs' versus 'wants' given during the MW and MOH tours. The $3.9M represents the cost to fully cover the essential needs. Unfortunately, the presentation wasn't able to make it to the screen and [name omitted]'s questions and comments that came before didn't make this distinction clear, leading to the misunderstanding that we were trying to gut the project. That said, I appreciate that the discussion paved the way for Daniel Day to propose an alternative: making a larger investment in a single elementary school. That approach would eliminate significant redundancies and potentially offer a higher return on investment.

For what it’s worth, none of the articles were intended to be anti-spending. On the contrary, they were designed to promote smarter spending and more disciplined decision-making utilizing the same tools that now higher-ranked NH SB2 districts and $60M organizations use as standard practice. We aimed to make that distinction clear in our presentation and slide; however, I'll take the note that the "group is not uniformly against all spending" as feedback that we need to be much more effective in communicating that nuance. If you have any suggestions as to how we can do that I'd love to hear them!

Article 13: The district’s actions were equally questionable. Legally, the district does not have the authority to unilaterally cherry-pick portions of a petitioned warrant article. We were denied our right to have the article restored to the original language authorized by the signers, which undermines the very purpose of the petition process.