Monadnock Regional School District

School Board Finance Committee

Meeting Minutes

August 15, 2006

Monadnock Regional High School Teachers’ Room

Approved 9/5/06

Committee Members Present:

Bruce Tatro, Chairman

James Carnie, Vice Chairman

Gene White

Other School Board Members Present:

Jonathan Kenyon

Budget Committee Members Present:

Richard Bauries

Administrators Present:

Ken Dassau, Superintendent of Schools

David Hodgdon, Assistant Superintendent

Katie Chambers, Business Manager

Joe Smith, Principal, Monadnock Regional High School

Call to Order: Chairman B. Tatro called the meeting to order at 6:04 p.m.

Approval of Minutes: G. White moved and J. Carnie seconded approval of the minutes of July 12, 2006. The motion passed.

Revenue, Expenditure and Status of Assets Reports: K. Chambers distributed Revenue, Expenditure and Status of Asset Reports for FY 06/07 and as of this date. An inquiry was made as to whether the line of credit the District has established at some point in the past was still available. K. Chambers will find out.

Request to State – 05/06 Over Expenditure: K. Chambers distributed copies of both the letter of request that had been sent to the State and the letter from the State approving the request.

Budget Transfers: K. Chambers distributed copies of RSA 32:10 which describes the governing body’s (School Board’s) right to transfer money within the operating budget approved by the legislative body (voters). K. Chambers informed the members that she had spoken with counsel about whether the School Board could delegate that authority to staff and it was Attorney Hatfield’s opinion that was permissible. K. Chambers suggested that the members consider this for future discussion.

Chairman Tatro asked if information was being provided this evening explaining why some of the individual school budgets had been overspent in 2005/06. That information had not been researched yet and was not available but would be for the next meeting of the Committee. There was a discussion concerning on whose authority the prior year individual school budgets had been overspent. Superintendent Dassau stated that the Business Manager would provide the Board with the information about where over and under expenditures were occurring, but reports had not been provided which reflected these things.

K. Chambers then distributed a document that detailed the budget transfer approved by the School Board on June 20, 2006, and explained the format. Following that, documents reflecting three budget transfer requests were distributed, explained and discussed:

1. Gilsum to Sullivan transfer for one Special Education Tutor: A student previously enrolled at Sullivan would be at Gilsum in 06/07. The SPED tutor would follow the student from one school to the other. The transfer requested would move the funding for the tutor from the Sullivan SPED line items for wages and benefits to like line items in the Gilsum budget. G. White moved to recommend to the School Board that this transfer be approved. J. Carnie seconded. Motion passed.

2. High School / Middle School Athletics: When the Middle School budget had been separated from the High School budget, only the Athletic Director’s wages and benefits had been apportioned to the Middle School athletic accounts. The Athletic Director had recently apportioned the other accounts as proposed in the transfer request. Both the High School Principal and the Middle School Principal supported the request. J. Carnie

3. High School Transfers: The budgeted amounts for each line item were the default budget amounts. They did not reflect the budget proposed by the Principal and this would make it extremely difficult to manage the high school budget in 06/07. With this transfer request, the Principal was reflecting the budget as he proposed to operate within the bottom line provided by the default budget. B. Tatro moved to recommend to the School Board that this transfer be approved. G. White seconded. Motion passed.

Agenda: The issue of a prepared and pre-distributed agenda for committee meetings was raised. K. Chambers offered to send Chairman Tatro in advance of the meeting the list of items she was preparing to present in order that he could put an agenda together.

Answers to Questions: Chairman Tatro stressed that he expected to have answers to questions raised at committee meetings at the subsequent meeting. He stated his disappointment that this had not happened between the last meeting and this meeting. J. Carnie requested a 6 month breakout of MC2 expenses paid by the MRPSOC grant.

Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 7:04 p.m. upon approval of a motion by J. Carnie and second by G. White.