Because I am invested in The Fort at No. 4, I see news articles from the area. Yesterday I read a press release from School Administrative Unit 6 (SAU-6) which covers Claremont, NH.
Claremont is just up the road from the Fort so I read it.
The Business Administrator has been put on paid leave; a school board member with lots of accounting (CPA) was appointed to do the job of BA.
From my weak sources, it seems like this BA wasn’t doing a good job. There are no signed Audits since 2021. They have a budget short fall over around $5 million.
Entirely the fault of this administrator and those supervising her.
This, of course, led to the comments.
We could go into the blame game. Which comes down to Trump and “local taxes.” The local taxes are property taxes. The SAUs are funded from the local property taxes. Residents of the towns that belong to the SAU have to vote on the school budget. Occasionally the proposed budgets are not approved.
The budget for my SAU has failed twice in the past 10 years. The first time I showed up at school board meetings was to find out where the money was being spent. What I did manage to get into the record was that while the teachers salaries were not increased because of the vote, the administrator’s pay still went up.
I pushed for, and I believe they passed, a resolution that says, “If the teachers don’t get a raise, the administration doesn’t get a raise.”
The last time, the school system just overextended itself doing too much non-educational stuff.
Our SAU didn’t have anything looking like abuse of the budget; it just wasn’t restraining itself.
Claremont’s issues are entirely self-inflicted. 19 new teachers to the SAU were canned. They had already signed contracts, so those teachers are well and truly screwed.
This leaves public schools to figure out how to fund themselves all over the state. Most municipalities raise their own taxes in a way to avoid the issue because they know the state will not take responsibility.
Claremont seems to have mismanaged the little funding they have as a result of confusion and lack of state support. So now they are in an emergency budgeting event resulting in the return of equipment, cancellation of new teaching contacts and supplies orders to work towards a functional shoe string budget.
All this while the state pays federal stooges from the Heritage Foundation etc. to draw out the multiple court cases NH municipalities have filed against the state for failing at its federal duties.
To sum it up – Stupid and greedy republicans. Spineless Dems. Selfish and ignorant voter base.
And this is the straw man. This person has never listened to a Republican; instead, they have built an image of a “Republican” where they put motives and evil.
If the federal tax rate was a flat 10% and you made $35,000/year, you would pay $3,500 per year in taxes. If you make $350,000/year, your taxes would be $35,000 per year. No leftist screams that going from 10% to 11% will cost the person with the larger income $3,500 more per year but it will only cost the lower earner $350 more.
But if the tax rate drops from 10% to 9%, it is a tax cut for the wealthy.
But I’m ignorant, according to Mr. achy_joints. He believes that everything that PragerU puts out is “bullshit.” Why? He can’t tell you why, but he knows it is BS.
It reminds me of the people claiming Glenn Beck was a horrible person for the things he said. This is a man who was on talk radio for multiple hours per day; he was on a national televised show once a day. With 10 years of history, every single “proof” lead back to the same 5 minute collection of things he said out of context.
Mr. achy_joints thinks that everything will benefit from more regulations more taxes. Taxes he is unlikely to be paying.
I just get sick over reading the straw man arguments. These are people that haven’t had an open mind in years.
More government doesn’t fix anything. It can only make the situation worse.
I always have a hard time understanding why schools need SAUs. My elementary school had no administrators at all (the 6th grade teacher doubled as principal, as was the norm at the time). My high school had one, a former teacher who would also occasionally substitute because he was fully qualified. It isn’t that way here, not any more. Instead, it seems we have “swarms of officers” (as Jefferson put it), many of them with Ed.D “degrees” and most of them demonstrating regularly that a functioning brain is a disqualification for their jobs. So while I approve of the notion “admins don’t get a raise until teachers do” I’d prefer “if money is tight, administrator jobs are eliminated as needed to balance the budget”.
On “local taxes pay for SAUs” — that used to be true, until Claremont changed it by winning a NH Supreme Court case they brought and somehow managed to win. Now the local taxes pay a piece and statewide taxes pay an additional piece. It seems likely that administrative bloat in significant part stems from this.