The story
Last Tuesday did not go as hoped.
Tell me more, tell me more
The voters shot down the school board’s budget and energy-savings bond, and the town’s recreation bond. So, the school board will be forced to work with their default budget, polar bears are going to keep dying, and Sportsman Field will not be returfed. So, so, sad.
Default budget?
Basically, when the budget doesn’t pass, the board calculates a new budget by making adjustments to the prior one. This year’s default budget is $73,697,864, which is less than the 2019 budget. The school board will have to cut about $1.3 million. Our suggestion? Play lots and lots of Keno. If it’s good enough for the state government, then it’s good enough for us.
Are the taxpayers crazy?
No. Just passionately misinformed. When looking at our property taxes, the local education rate is $12.40, which is about the state average. Out of 210 towns, we are ranked 138 for the most expensive. Other districts pay over $20. And, our cost per pupil is $13,300, which is smaller than other districts, but fairly average for a district of our size.
So…
We’re average! The budget increase was in no way out of place. And, by the very nature of our town, our property has a high value, so a large amount of taxes is expected.
What now?
We wait for the school board to make some hard decisions and fing $1.3 million of budget cuts. We personally stand behind returfing the football field, especially since we just won. Though, we would totally understand if school needs to close up shop a few weeks earlier, and make the last day of school in May. You have our permission.
The Runaway
The district is down some money because of the misconception that our taxes are too expensive. Time to play Keno!
What to say…
When you’re too lazy to check out our winter sports guide one last time…
Just spell it out. Fine. We will.
- Boys Hockey: Hello!? State championship? They basically just dominated all season. It’s hard to pick out their highlight game. But, we beat Concord twice, who was seeded higher than us.
- Girls Hockey: Maddie Lucontoni made first team for defense, and they didn’t even make it to playoffs. Dang, girl!
- Gymnastics: The team placed second this year, the highest they’ve ever placed. They lost two matches to Londonderry, but beat them in the state meet, their preseason goal.
- Boys Basketball: Their highlight was bringing Portsmouth, ranked sixth, into double overtime. And we’re ranked 16th. We lost, but still. Not too shabby.
- Girls Basketball: They too had a their highlight during the Portsmouth game. Portsmouth ended up beating them in the quarterfinals, but we won the regular season game, which gave us the three seed. If only there could’ve been a rematch.
- Alpine: The girls won and the boys took second! We can’t really pick out one highlight－the girls won every meet, and the boys won all except for one second place.
- Nordic: Our highlight for them is that they took third place at the state meet with barely any on snow practice. It’s all talent－practice is for amateurs.
- Swim and Dive: For dive, our one man show, Alex Beekman, took first at states. For swim, both teams took home a win against Dover on senior night. That always makes it better.
- Track and Field: Zach Verow placed in almost every meet, and got five first place finishes. The other highlight: the girls relay team with Hannah Mikol, Brianna CoCo, Veronica Gikas, and Ellie Flynn. They placed in the top three in almost every meet.
- Wrestling: Our top wrestlers were Jack Carozzi with eight wins, Matt Cosio with five, and Will Theodore with five.
When you’re forced to compare apples and…another type of apple…
Dang, we’re splitting hairs here. You know what that sounds like? IB and AP! Don’t you love it when we come full circle? We talked with Mr. Cannon, who we’ve learned has a big heart. So big that he can fit both IB and AP in there. As he told us, there’s room for both. The school purposefully makes sure that the two programs are not competing－there’s an AP psychology offered, so they aren’t going to offer IB psychology. And, short answer－it does restrict the IB diploma students. But, as he put it, it’s a choice they have to make. As far as what courses are made IB and what are AP, Mr. Cannon doesn’t know. His guess? IB classes are core classes, and AP courses are more electives. So, everyone but the IB kids get to have fun. And, it’s officially been confirmed that students are not being indoctrinated by the UN. Phew, we dodged a bullet there.
When you’re trying to figure out the best qualities in a candidate…
It’s a little late for that, don’t you think? The town elected Linda Camarota to state rep this past November, who we have learned has a lot of compassion. So much that she does not want anyone else to suffer from school employees writing character references for a child molestor, so she’s proposed a bill to prohibit it. We are grateful for her concern, because, you know, this is something that is rather common. You’re welcome Merrimack! There’s no longer any need to worry!
When senioritis is killing you and you’re dying for that change in scenery…
Too bad, so sad. We have about two and a half month left. But we do have a change for yuo. John Schneller is our new school board member by a landslide! To sum everything up, he is a member of the Bedford Tax Association, he’s looking for close communication with the town, he wants to decrease the budget, and he has a vast knowledge of Christmas trees. Let’s think about this though, he was elected, and all of the tax increases failed…
When the schools tried to teach “honesty is the best policy” to students in elementary school…
Well, only 81 percent of them listened. We polled our Instagram, and found that 19 percent of the Youth Risk Behavior survey takers did not answer honestly. So, we’re not so sure we can trust the results from two years ago…and to think that it might have triggered ideas for different task forces…
Things to Know
Screw Sports!
Go robots! The robotics team made it to quarterfinals in their competition this past weekend! Then some slighting malfunctioning happened…