Feb 2024 Board Budget Message

Greetings from the school board. On Wednesday our board decided to maintain our proposed budget for vote on Town Meeting day, meaning you can vote using the ballot that was mailed to you.

While it appears that Act H.850 will change assumptions we used in creating our proposed budget, we decided not to cancel the vote for two primary reasons:

Our most recent estimates of the impact on property taxes is not significantly different from what we anticipated when we approved the budget in January.

Given that ballots have already been mailed, we believe it is important to avoid the confusion, inconvenience and expense of canceling and rewarning a separate budget vote.

The board understands that the tax impact of our proposed budget is challenging for our community. Our budget includes reductions of approximately $700,000 in expenses. However, the combination of negotiated increases in salary and medical insurance, the loss of pandemic federal funding and cost inflation along with continued decline in our student population results in estimated tax increases ranging from 15% in Worcester to 26% in Berlin. This is in line with other school districts regionally and statewide.

We recognize that our district needs structural change for both financial and education quality reasons. Our Reconfiguration Committee has been studying possible scenarios for changing the use of our facilities and has identified at least two for detailed analysis. We plan to share our findings with the community in the coming months.

Please consider attending our annual meeting on March 4 (5:30pm) at U-32 and via Zoom; this will include presentations of the proposed budget and our work on possible reconfiguration of our district. More information about the proposed budget is here: Budget Resources - Washington Central Unified Union School District (https://www.wcuusd.org/). As always, please contact any school board member with any questions.

Thank you for your support,

Amelia, Zach and Flor

May 20, 2024, 6:30 to 8:30 PM

May 22, 2024, 5 to 7 PM

May 24, 2024, 5 to 8 PM