AUBURN — An almost $800,000 school budget shortfall has Auburn residents demanding not only accountability from the school district, but also details on how it happened and what the board is going to do to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Nearly 100 residents packed the Auburn Village School gymnasium Wednesday to hear from the school board, after school field trips and spring sports were scrapped earlier this month to trim spending for the remainder of this school year.
Four contracted special education paraprofessionals will leave by April 5, and four staff paraprofessionals will be reassigned, with three transferring from kindergarten classrooms, according to administrators at SAU 15.
The school’s special education administrative assistant is being dismissed.
The $776,000 shortfall represents about 4.5% of Auburn’s $17 million 2023-2024 school budget.
Both SAU 15 Superintendent Bill Rearick and the interim head of special education were absent from Wednesday’s meeting — the second meeting this month to focus on tackling the budget crisis and minimizing potential impacts on students.
The school board reported that both administrators have been out sick.
The school board is examining what cuts, if any, need to be made for the 2024-2025 school year at Auburn’s single school, which serves 629 students in kindergarten through grade 8.
Its findings and recommendations will be shared at a board meeting on April 9.
Parents voiced their concerns and suggestions during the public comment period Wednesday, which continued for more than two hours.
“I find it incredibly odd and unnerving that the superintendent is so ill, as well as the interim special education director, that they can’t be here. At what point did we realize that checks and balances weren’t being done?” asked resident Marie Plefka. “Nobody’s answering the question, ‘Who didn’t do things correctly?”
“Where was the SAU three months ago when someone should have said, ‘Something seems off?’ We’re told, ‘Someone didn’t file paperwork.’ What’s being done to make sure this doesn’t happen again?” Plefka said.
Parents and residents criticized what appears to be a breakdown in the chain of command. Several called for an independent audit, not just of finances, but of how district operations are conducted.
“To me, the budget problem is a symptom of not acting in a timely manner. We had people who are not doing their jobs properly,” a problem in process and oversight, said Dustin Dulac. “It’s clear to me that there’s a leadership issue.”
“My taxes go up because somebody didn’t do what they’re supposed to do?” Amanda Martinelli said.
“The board is expecting to hold the superintendent accountable,” as well as the special education head, said Alan Villeneuve, the school board chair. “I completely respect that trust has been broken.” At every meeting “we look at expenditures to act and react,” he said.
School board Vice Chair Janice Baker said the board had “a positive fund balance” through March, and believed the special education trust fund would cover any overages.
Villeneuve said the problem was compounded by steeply rising special education costs and children entering with more intense needs. According to district administrators and the board, the budget gap appears to have resulted from multiple people not adequately compiling, reporting, updating or submitting special education expenses or applications on time.
More students were identified for special education services than were expected when this year’s special education budget was developed in fall 2022, Villeneuve said.
The school board has outlined ways to make up the deficit from a variety of sources, including tapping school revenue, state catastrophic aid, liquidating a special education trust fund, borrowing against a capital trust fund, reducing school spending, and using an advance against next year’s budget. Auburn may still be eligible for state or federal grants available through June, through the New Hampshire Department of Education, Villeneuve said.
A preschool serving up to 24 students at Auburn Village School, set to open in September, could save money by eliminating the expense of placing youngsters out of town, he said.
A mother of an Auburn School kindergartner who receives special education services said she is worried about the social and emotional toll of removing staff paraprofessionals from kindergarten to fill the role of the contracted paraprofessionals who are being let go, who provided one-on-one help to children with special needs.
“It will be a loss, traumatic” for some of the children, she said, especially for those who need help with lunch and putting on their clothes. Some “will potentially have some abandonment issues.”
Since the shortfall was made public, five parents have started the nonprofit Auburn Braves Athletic Booster Club to raise roughly $25,000 to cover the costs of spring sports. The PTA is raising money to underwrite field trips.
Villeneuve said the school board is open to creating an account that businesses and individual donors can contribute to.
“Parents were not really aware of the budget issues until our kids came home and said there was no sports,” said Heather Lockwood, who co-founded the Auburn Booster Club.
“There’s a lot of frustration,” said Julie Demers, who has a second grader and an incoming kindergartner at Auburn Village School. “The community was blindsided.” The shortfall was first announced at the school budget vote on March 12. “There’s a real demand for transparency overall.”
The school board chair told residents that the district’s errors and omissions insurance could not cover the budget shortfall, and could only be tapped if there was proof of malfeasance.
Also, at the meeting, the school board announced a decision to turn down a loan from Pinkerton Academy in Derry, where Auburn taxpayers pay tuition for Auburn students to attend high school.
