As the board notes (pg 14) in the 2025-26 Annual Report, the budget (finance) committee was an “asset for several years” but was ‘suspended’ early in this school year. After being closely involved in not only the budget process but providing other valuable (we thought) service to the board over the past several years, it was quite surprising to be discharged from the charge assigned to us after the last budget crisis.

Recognizing that this was a particularly difficult budget year with all the uncertainties at the state level,one might think having the four well-versed community members engaged in the process would have been an asset again this year. Who knows whether we could’ve had any positive impact on the bottom line but the committee certainly would have been an advocate and would have put its support behind even such painful increases.

We need to be grateful that the state still provides income-sensitivity relief via education tax rebates - much less-so for municipal taxes - so an increase of this magnitude will have less of an impact on most of our district’s homeowners but it is still hard to accept tax increases of such magnitude.

We simply cannot keep doing this year after year after year. Have a look at the per pupil costs (after correcting the addition on the page 9 enrollment chart) and take a deep breath.

Marvin Harrison,

Ex-finance committee

member from Newbury, VT

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