It’s that time of year again from a school budget and property tax bill point of view. And it’s time to start our annual series of articles regarding the financial aspects of running the District.
We’re going to take a different approach this year. The past two years, our articles built a base of knowledge about the school budget and the property tax process. Instead of repeating some of the basics, we’re going to address aspects of these that are either new or specific to this year. As before, we won’t address any non-financial aspect of the ongoing Covid pandemic.
With that, here’s a brief preview of some of the articles we’ll be publishing between now and the vote in March:
- Overview of Budget Schedule (included in this article)
- 2022 Property Tax Bills and Funds “returned” to towns in the District
- Summary of the recently negotiated three-year Collective Bargaining Agreement (subject to voter approval in March)
- Details of proposed FY23 School Budget (also subject to voter approval in March)
- Summary of current funding of education by the State of New Hampshire.
These new articles (as well as all previous financial publications) will all be available on the ConVal School Board website: schoolboard.convalsd.net
We’ll let you know when we post new material. Stay tuned.
Jim Fredrickson (Sharon)
Chairman, Budget & Property Committee
ConVal School Board
FY23 ConVal School Budget Schedule
These are the key dates and events associated with this budget cycle:
- July 1, 2021 – 1st day of FY22
- August 2021 – Board developed and approved “FY23 Budget Guidance” to be used by the Superintendent and staff to develop the proposed School Budget for FY23
- November 6, 2021 – Annual School Board Budget Meeting
- November/December – Towns issue 2022 Property Tax bills
- January 2022 – Board finalizes and “approves” Proposed FY23 Budget
- Public hearing on proposed Budget – January 11, 2022
- January 2022 – 2nd Board sponsored Community Forum (date TBD)
- February 8, 2022 – Deliberative Session
- March 8, 2022 – Voting day
- July 1, 2022 – 1st day of FY23
The two most significant changes this budget cycle include:
- the “return” of a significant amount of funds from FY21. This will be covered in detail in the next article
- the 2nd Community Forum – to be held in late January after the Board “approves” the proposed budget and before the Deliberative Session in February. This new event is intended to provide a more informal discussion of the proposed budget (and several other topic of interest) – with community members. If you’ve ever been to a Public Hearing or Deliberative Session, you’ll appreciate the use of the word “informal”. More on this later.
Annual School Board Budget Meeting
The annual School Board Budget meeting was held on Saturday, November 6th, at the District offices. The Superintendent and staff presented the initial proposed budget. The Board discussed several of the proposed changes including: curriculum, planned expansion of the District’s pre-school program, and several other options. This was an informative meeting – decisions on specific aspects of the budget will be discussed and voted on at regularly scheduled Board meetings.