By Rod Hansen
Staff Writer

Residents of Weare can expect to save about 40 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value thanks to a surplus in this year’s school budget, district officials have said.

“If you had to point to one cost area, we were fortunate in the area of special education,” said Jim Crane, business administrator for School Administrative Unit 24, in explaining the budget surplus.

The SAU, which represents school districts in Weare, Henniker and Stoddard as well as John Stark Regional High School in Weare, reported a $658,732 budget surplus last week, or 2.4 percent of the $27 million in overall budget appropriations.

On a per-district basis, the surplus breaks down to John Stark Regional High School with $143,461; Henniker’s share amounting to $236,811; Weare’s surplus totaling $187,315 and Stoddard at $91,145, Crane said.

The surplus from John Stark will be split between Weare and Henniker, with Weare to receive two-thirds of the surplus, Crane said. Both communities are served by John Stark Regional High School, with Weare sending a higher proportion of students there, he said.

Special education and high interest rates on short-term investments were to primary factors in the surplus, Crane said.

“Part of the reasons why we have fund balances going back this year is because we had set the tax rates conservatively for catastrophic aid and Medicaid reimbursement,” said Crane.

For example, administrators set the budget assuming the state Legislature would only provide partial funding for catastrophic aid, Crane said. Legislators ultimately provided full funding for the catastrophic aid entitlement, he said.

Similarly, Medicaid made more funding available than was expected in speech and occupational therapy for qualifying special education students, Crane said.

“Special education students are something of a transient population and everybody kind of lowballs that,” said Crane. “This year we got more reimbursement than we had expected.”

Although the unexpected reimbursements in special education made for a welcome surprise, Crane said he did not attribute them to any trend that might continue in the future.

“You don’t plan on things like this when your doing your budget; it’s just nice when you get them,” Crane said.

Investments also helped to generate a budget surplus this year, Crane said.

“All of our general fund money we roll into investment accounts, that’s been benefitted because short-term interests rates going up,” he said.

The surplus will be of especial benefit to Weare voters because this year marked the town’s first principal payments on the $18.5 million, 20-year bond for the construction of Weare Middle School, Crane said.

School board members will begin planning for next year’s budget in October, said board vice chairman Marjorie Burke.

This year’s surpluses will not affect the district’s special education planning for next year, Burke said.

“You really don’t know what to expect from special education from year to year,” Burke said. “I believe we’re already going to have some special education students we weren’t expecting,” Burke said.