The story
It’s budget season! And it’s Christmas season. Coincidence? We think not.
Budget season?
You know, the time of year when the school board decides how it’s going to spend its money. This year, they’re working with $76 million. 1/76 of that goes to BHS. Don’t ask where the rest goes…
So what?
So, nothing! We watched hours of school board budget videos and went through so many documents to find a story. And guess what?! It’s not interesting. At all. Now, you’re going to suffer with us on the most boring ways BHS wants to spend its money. We’re fighting Thanos here.
Let’s do this.
New funding requests? BHS is looking to spend money on new athletic rental locations, athletic transportation, new textbooks, equipment replacements, and more MST tuition. Good stuff, right? They’re also looking for full time math/computer science teacher, two full time special education positions, a financial clerk to deal with student affairs, and two crew coaches. Feeling our pain yet?
And the important things?
As we looked through 91 pages of BHS’ proposed expenses, we found less boring things. They weren’t interesting, but better than the two new IB English books being added. The school wants to spend $95 on cleaning the bulldog mascot costume. We really hope that this is an annual expense, and not an every 12 years thing. The school is also going spend $834 on new babies for FACs, because it is so important to teach 16-year olds how to parent. Less boring?
Keep going
Care to guess what’s spent on clubs vs. sports? We spend a rough $56,940 on clubs. It may seem like a lot, but not compared to the $340,097 spent on sports. That includes uniforms, transportation, payments for officials etc. Clubs get 16 percent of what sports get…do with that what you want. That also means that 38 percent of the budget is not academic related…again, do with that what you want.
What now?
You hope that we never tackle the budget ever again. However, budget season is still in full swing, and the board will have a final summary in January.
The Runaway
Never run for school board.
What to say…
When you’re interested in school activities that include escapes and takedowns…
Try LARP or Wrestling. The wrestling team lost one of its captains and best wrestler, A.J. Pagliarulo, this year due to injury, but is still hoping to have a good season. In his absence, Jack Carozzi, Thiago Souza, and William Theodore will hopefully lead the team. We won in 2014, which was our last year in DII, and have not made it to the championship since moving to DI. While change in this case is always good, it seems a little unlikely since team lost their season opener against Londonderry 62-18. Now, we don’t really understand how the scoring in wrestling works, but those two scores are very far apart, so we’re going to assume that’s a bad thing. However, there’s a new wrestling coach with some impressive experience. He’s pretty optimistic that he’s going to bring the team far. The team has yet to answer our burning question on how much they practice professional wrestling moves…#ifyouknowyouknow.
When you’re having some trouble with the (school) authorities…
I am Groot. While we have had a total of 19 out-of-school suspensions so far this year, five alone in November, we still seem to be doing better than last year. At the end of November 2017, there was a total of 25 out-of-school suspensions year-to-date, and nine in November. We think we’ve identified the problem, @BHSClassof2018. But, we’ve figured out how to not get suspended, because it seems pretty easy. Ready for a mini guide? Don’t do drugs in school, go to class, and be nice to people. We don’t think it’s very hard.
When the school board thinks adding a third SRO is unnecessary…
Sounds like the Union Leader with Bedford boys basketball. Apparently, we’re unnecessary, and barely worth mentioning. But don’t worry, we wrote our own preview.
Things to Know
Suck It Up
Winter sports－meet the coaches tonight at 6:30! Woohoo!
Pitch Perfect-esque
The winter concert is tomorrow! Go see the choir perform, and feel bad for not being as talented!
Finally Something to Do
The winter sports season is starting up this week! We have boys and girls hockey, wrestling, girls basketball, and swimming. Find exact times and places on our winter sports guide.