Windham and Bonny Eagle school systems will be able to weather the recent curtailment of state subsidy without cutting programs or services, officials in both districts said this week.

Windham-Raymond schools, known as Regional School Unit 14, were hit with a decrease in state aid of $198,891, out of an expected $14.2 million in a $37.4 million budget.

Toby Pennels, who serves as chairman of the finance committee of the Regional School Unit 14 board of directors, told board members at a school board meeting last Wednesday that the district should be able to withstand the curtailment without cutting positions or programs.

“The bottom line, and what I conveyed and recommended to the board, is that we don’t have to cut anything at this juncture,” Pennels said.

Pennels said the loss in state aid could be covered by the school board’s budget reserve, which has $76,886. The board also has $65,270 in savings it realized last summer after pre-paying some leases, Pennels said. The board also has a contingency fund totaling $220,000.

“So, we’re not in panic mode, we’ve already got about $142,000 of it covered, so let’s not start talking about cutting programs and services, which is what gets everyone excited and concerned,” Pennels said.

Pennels said dipping in to the contingency fund will probably not be required. To cover the remaining $56,000 balance, Pennels said the administration has imposed a spending freeze on discretionary accounts such as materials and supplies and professional development.

Pennels said he is also expecting savings in energy costs due to the warmer-than-usual fall and winter.

“And that’s the type of thing that can help us get out of this bind without having to actually cut anything in the end,” he said.

While he’s hopeful about covering the curtailment, Pennels said, the school system may get another cut if the governor’s proposal to cut the Department of Health and Human Services doesn’t receive support from the Legislature.

“The big unknown is, is there more coming? With DHHS in the situation they’re in, we’re not nai?ve to think that possibly there’s more coming. But we’ll deal with that if it happens,” Pennels said.

Superintendent Sandy Prince said the mid-year adjustments are becoming commonplace due to projections falling short of actual revenue at the state level.

“We’re getting way too familiar with curtailments,” he said. “In the last six years, we’ve had five of them, so I call it the five-punch whammy. We’re still bruising from all these previous curtailments. But I’m not whining. We’re here to educate the students, and the educators will always do the right thing in the worst of times. We’ll always do the best we can with what we have.”

The curtailments can be severe. A few years ago, Windham had to find about $900,000 in a mid-year budget crunch. Finding the cash is difficult, Prince said.

“What’s challenging is 80 percent of our budget is salaries and benefits so there’s not a heck of lot to trim,” he said.

When asked if the board may budget extra in anticipation of a mid-year subsidy adjustment, Pennels and Prince said padding the budget is not an option.

“The problem with doing that is we have to answer, to include a vote, to the taxpayers,” Pennels said. “So if we put a $300,000 cushion in because we’re expecting the state to issue a mid-year curtailment, that probably wouldn’t fly. The answer to me is let them do something and then figure it out.”

Bonny Eagle

At Bonny Eagle, Superintendent Frank Sherburne said Tuesday the School Administrative District 6 board of directors had yet to discuss the curtailment but that the district is in good position to handle the subsidy cut since it had anticipated such a move.

The district is facing a loss in subsidy of $287,446.50, out of an expected $20.16 million in a $40.5 million budget.

“The district has a $400,000 contingency fund. However, when we heard word that there would be a curtailment, we went line by line and took money out of the voter-approved budget and set that aside,” Sherburne said of an estimated $450,000 in targeted cost savings. “So we believe we’ll be able to meet that curtailment using the money that we set aside, so we don’t have to touch the contingency amount.”

Sherburne said dipping into the contingency is unneeded and unwise.

“We still have half the year to go in this fiscal year, so we don’t necessarily want to be diving into the contingency fund in case something were to happen,” he said. “That would create a problem for us.”