While the topic upon which I am pontificating about tonight is more New Hampshire-centric than it might otherwise be, I think it has some relevance in other states, too. To what am I referring?
Education funding.
I will not be getting into the bits and pieces about how it is handled in New Hampshire as there is already debate enough about it going on and there is one ballot question related to it that will be addressed during the election in November>
Instead, I have some questions for the school systems in New Hampshire that had some pretty large budget deficits over the past school year. One community, Claremont, has a $5 million deficit. Concord’s school budget deficit was almost $17 million back in February of this year. Yet another town, Milton, is also reporting that it has a $2.5 million school budget deficit.
Just what the heck is going on in these communities that is causing such large deficits? Haven’t there been any audits that show where the money has gone? When an audit of Windham’s school was performed a while back it showed all kinds of vulnerabilities which could lead to misspent funds. I have to ask just how often such audits are performed in our towns and by whom? My town’s school budget is around $32 million for the present school year. I’d like to make sure it is being spent properly and that we aren’t overpaying on some line items. I’d also like to see whether what are normally “Nice To Have’s” haven’t been morphed into “Need To Haves” when they really aren’t. That goes for our municipal budget as well.
Considering that the school budget in most towns ans cities are between 60% and 70% of all municipal spending, ensuring the spending of those funds is being handled properly is paramount.
