Opinion: Regarding the school budget

To the editor:

For at least the last half-decade, Dartmouth has underprioritized the schools.  The following list is the percent increase all town budget line items have received from FY19 to FY25*:

78.1% Town Administrator/Selectboard

76.9% Weights and Measures

63.6% Building Dept

63.3% Park Commission

61.3% Facility & Vehicle Maintenance

58.7% Emergency Management

58.0% MIS

55.9% Council on Aging

51.4% Elections

50.1% HR

41.4% Town Clerk

38.8% Board of Appeals

34.1% Planning Board

32.7% Budget, Finance, and Treasury

31.9% Veterans Department

25.2% DPW Salaries

23.3% DARTMOUTH PUBLIC SCHOOLS

21.8% Town Accountant

18.3% Youth Commission

17.7% Board of Health

17.1% Animal Control

15.9% Conservation Commission

14.5% Police

10.9% Town Collector

10.5% DPW Expense

9.5% Assessors

8.8% Town Meeting

7.3% Solar Net Metering

6.3% Libraries

0% Legal, Communications, Street Lights, Traffic Lights, Historical Commission

-1.5% Natural Resources

*Excluded from this list are the following line items which either we cannot directly control through the budgeting process, or it would be fiscally imprudent to neglect to fund: GNB Voc-Tech, Bristol Aggie, insurance, employee benefits, debt service, and FinComm reserve.

If all other town departments were able to hold their ACTUAL spending to the same rate of increase as the schools have from FY19 to FY23, it would have resulted in an overall savings of $787,733 in FY24 alone. That would be three quarters of the way to solving the problem of the immediate fiscal cliff we find ourselves approaching, but unfortunately we can’t look backward to go forward.

To be clear, our other town departments are in fact working on a shoe string budget, and to cut them significantly would mean painful service reductions to the town at large. But our children have already received their painful service reductions over the past two years and will be going on a third if the current draft budget becomes the final budget.

So, I agree with my dueling op-ed partner, we need a plan to fix the funding for our schools, and the options are neither pretty nor pleasant.  But the one option that should not be on the table is to ask our children, the sole customer of the school department, to continue bearing the town’s financial burden on their own.

Sincerely,

Nathan Silva