Budget Article Clarification

By Rachel Margolis
In my article “Cost Reduction at Hanover High School,” which summarizes my interview with Principal Gillespie, I wrote that the budget would be impacted by a loss of $500,000 from Dartmouth College. The $500,000 in “revenue” was not directly from Dartmouth; rather, it was left over from a bond issue surplus of $1,300,000 and used to partially replace a yearly sum that Dartmouth would no longer contribute. The Dresden School District received $1,940,000 from the college every year for five years, the last being the 2008-2009 fiscal year. According to Dresden Cost Reduction Committee chair Carey Callaghan, the school board incorporated $800,000 from the surplus into the 2009-2010 budget and the other $500,000 into the 2010-2011 budget so that “the loss of the Dartmouth money would be less painful, as there were some offset monies to help smooth the transition.” Although he acknowledges that “‘revenue’ is arguably the wrong word,” he explains that the school district “has historically categorized all sources of funds—assessments from Hanover and Norwich, building aid from the state, tuition from other districts, etc., as ‘revenue.'”