Small New England Town Cuts School Board Budget—in Half | Patrick Carroll

Small New England Town Cuts School Board Budget—in Half | Patrick Carroll: A small town in New England recently voted to cut its school board budget in half in an attempt to tackle inefficiency and administrative bloat. But not everyone in the town is on board.

One of the main topics of discussion was the proposed $1.7 million budget for the Croydon School Board. This would cover the 24 students in the Croydon Village School, a K-4 one room schoolhouse, and about 53 older students who are tuitioned out to public and private schools in the area. The $1.7 million budget represented an increase of about 30 percent over the last three years, and would have come with an estimated property tax increase of nearly 19 percent.

The chair of the school board, Jody Underwood, gave a presentation during the meeting explaining the budget so that people could understand what they were voting on. But right after her presentation, Ian Underwood, her husband, did something daring. He made a motion from the floor to reduce the budget to $800,000, a 53 percent cut.

Ian’s motion was not unplanned. Earlier in the meeting, he had handed out a pamphlet explaining what he intended to do and his rationale behind the proposal. Jody was aware of his plan, but was not involved.

An excellent article from the Foundation for Economic Education.   I believe the fight against this is so strong because we are Fighting Big Ed and the Teachers' Unions.  This is a David and Goliath situation.   After decades of poor educational results and excessive spending it is time for real reform where the students and families are put first and not school employees and teachers. 

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Cathy Peschke 

Citizens for Reasonable and Fair Taxes.