In years past, Tara Blaney, a member of the Chichester Budget Committee, has carried a fiscally conservative voice into town and school meetings, trying to balance the welfare of the town with the health of its bank accounts.
Saturday, though, at the annual Chichester School District Meeting, Blaney wanted to add a little more money to the school budget to hire a new full-time teacher to the school staff by proposing an amendment that would have raised the proposed $7.78 million spending plan by $100,000 for the upcoming school year.
“With the information that they presented and in reading between the lines and looking into the future, what we’ve always liked about the school is the smaller class sizes,” Blaney said shortly after the 2½-hour meeting at the Chichester Central School. “You want to maintain a classroom of 20 kids or less. Otherwise, you’re going to have a classroom of (more children) and one teacher, and that, to me, seems very hard to manage and hard to make sure those kids are getting a good education.”
The $7.78 million budget passed, meaning a 61-cent, or 4.5%, tax increase, from $11.73 to $12.34. That’s an additional $213 per year on a home costing $350,000, which works out to about $17.75 per month.
Relatively speaking, Chichester emerged from its meeting with a tax increase far lower than many other towns, including Pembroke, which faced a 28.1 percent spike in property taxes before residents cut $3 million from the school budget Saturday.
Blaney crunched the numbers and was confident the school budget could handle the added money needed to hire another teacher.
“I felt strongly that we should add $100,000,” Blaney said. “I did the math. It would have been an extra $76 on your tax bill.”
Her amendment failed, 32-12. School board member Brianne Stone said the board ultimately failed to show the need for another teacher.
“Somebody had asked what would have happened if money had not been an object,” Stone said.
In other business, a pair of save-for-a-rainy-day articles were approved, each seeking $100,000 for investments, in the special education expendable trust fund and the building maintenance expendable trust fund.
Meanwhile, Blaney hopes a think-outside-the-box solution is on the horizon, leading to more help and limiting class sizes to 20 or fewer.
“I’m disappointed, but I am not surprised,” Blaney said. “If they come up with a new solution that will make it so our class sizes are still small, and we can go back to having separate fourth and fifth grade, if they do that, that’s great. I’ll be 100% behind it.”