BRISTOL — Hopes for installing a modular classroom at Danbury Elementary School next year are dead, victim of a razor-thin end-of-the-year budget surplus. Restoring attendance by four students bumped from the preschool roster was more successful, but with some restrictions on the number of days they can attend.
The Newfound Area School Board had failed to ask voters to approve the modular classroom at the school district’s annual meeting, despite having been discussing the need for more space in Danbury. The board mistakenly believed it could use money from the building maintenance trust fund for the new classroom, but that money is restricted to repairs, not new construction.
The board subsequently voted to allocate $200,000 of the unexpended fund balance for the project, to be supplemented by volunteer labor and donated material. The school board reaffirmed the vote after learning that use of volunteer labor would not be allowed because it could lead to liability claims against a company doing the construction — a change that would push the cost to nearly $300,000.
The agenda for a special school board meeting on June 26 included approval of $6,000 for the design and planning for the modular classroom whose full price by then was estimated to be between $270,500 and $296,000.
Interim Superintendent Steven Nilhas brought the bad news to the board at that meeting: The latest projection for the unassigned fund balance is in the range of $150,000, far short of the $600,000 discussed at a previous board meeting or the $900,000 the district had projected in February. Nilhas explained that much of the projected surplus had evaporated when the district was able to fill staff positions that had long been vacant.
“Frankly, it’s not until we turn in the [budget report] into the state of New Hampshire and [Department of Revenue Administration] in September, there’s a final reckoning of what that looks like it really is,” Nilhas said. “[The surplus] could be more, it could be less.” By law, a school district cannot spend more than budgeted.
“It pains me greatly to share this news,” Nilhas said, “but I think we have to be realistic; we have to be careful.”
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