MANCHESTER, N.H. – As the Fiscal Year 2027 budget season continues for the Manchester School District, the Manchester Board of School Committee and the Manchester Board of Mayor and Aldermen held a joint meeting at Manchester Memorial High School to try and iron out any confusion over questions about the proposed school district budgets.
After Manchester School District leadership provided an overview of the three budgets proposed by the Manchester Board of School Committee and the various scenarios where staff layoffs and other cuts would need to be made if the “baseline” or “fully-funded” budgets are not approved, Ward 8 Alderman Ed Sapienza began the questions by asking for clarification regarding the bonding procedure for Phase One of the Manchester School District’s Long-Term Facilities Plan.
Bond experts brought to the meeting said that efforts to use $62 million in cash and $78 million in bond anticipation notes or BANs were used to pay down part of the $290 million approved to be bonded for the initiative in advance due to the expectation that it would save approximately $31 million long term in repayment costs. Sapienza felt that using this strategy handcuffed the school district, but it was indicated that staggered bond issuance and repayments based on construction schedules and advantageous bond market conditions is standard procedure with comparable municipal projects.
Two of the scenarios indicated that the amount of money used toward the bond repayments would be lowered if the baseline or fully-funded budgets were not approved, set at $4.4 million in one option and $8.8 million in another. These repayments would impact the Fiscal Year 2028 budget, but the $4.4 million approach could be cancelled out by a $7 million drop expected in Fiscal Year 2029 as an earlier bond comes off the books.
Several members from both boards expressed concern over the possibility of cuts Alderman At-Large Dan O’Neil advised against cutting funding for athletics programs due to their ability to help encourage student-athletes stay in school. O’Neil also expressed concern about the impact these discussions were having on teacher morale, a sentiment echoed by At-Large School Committee Member Jim O’Connell.
Ward 4 School Committee Member Leslie Want recalled another large budget cut in 2012 that saw hundreds of lost positions and compared it the subsequent years to recovery from a natural disaster.
“It takes a long time to build things up and it took a long time to get back to where we were after that devastating cut and we’ve done that,” she said. “It can take years to build a building, but only a day to take it down.”
In response to a question from Ward 7 Alderman Ross Terrio, Manchester School District Superintendent Jenn Chmiel said that the issue of the approximately $16 million gap between what is allowable under the tax cap and the baseline budget needed to retain all staff members would not go away if it is not addressed this year, but rather compound.
Special education student needs were another major concern. Ward 10 Alderman Bill Barry asked if vocational students at Manchester School of Technology interested in careers in special education or local college students seeking degrees in education could be paired with teachers working with special education students to strengthen the district’s special education support structure. Chmiel said it was possible, but it could not be done immediately.
Ward 12 Alderwoman Kelly Thomas asked if facilities being renovated within Phase One could refocused toward greater support of special education students in the hope of lowering costs. Chmiel said it would be difficult as Phase One is already in progress, currently 22 percent completed. However, O’Connell said that modifications to the city’s middle schools will help special education students.
Thomas also asked if the school district could recoup the almost $400,000 in unpaid school lunch debt, but Ward 5 Alderman Jason Bonilla noted that a proposal relating to school debt had been scrapped due to the stigmatization that would ensue for students with lunch debt receiving specialized meals. O’Connell said that obtaining repayments from parents with school debt would not only feel somewhat confrontational with those parents, but would also require resources that the district does not have and those resources could be put to better use elsewhere if it did have them.
Following the submission of the mayor’s budget for the Manchester School District on Thursday night, the Board of Mayor and Aldermen will be tasked with approving a final bottom line number for the school budget on a date before the end of the current fiscal year at the end of June.
In order to get approval for the baseline or fully-funded budgets, there would need to be ten votes of support from the Board of Mayor and Aldermen if all members were present.