Voters are clear on school udgets, especially in Sharon

During budget season, town and school officials often say they are disappointed that more people don’t turn out to comment or vote on the budgets they worked so hard to craft.

 No one is saying that this year. Turnout has been high in most towns and there has been plenty of discourse about the proposed spending plans. In the best-case scenarios, that discourse (even if it starts out with an emotional edge) eventually turns into constructive dialogue. Salisbury’s sometimes difficult but ultimately successful progress toward an elementary school budget this year is one example.

Other towns haven’t been so lucky. In North Canaan and Sharon, the discourse has tended to be one-sided, with painful results. North Canaan Board of Education Chairman Martha Scott was reduced to tears as she asked voters why they waited until the bitter end to criticize the plan. Why didn’t they speak up, she asked, during the many difficult weeks when her board tried to hash out a budget that met taxpayer expectations without diminishing the quality of education?

That budget eventually passed — with the highest voter turnout in recent memory.

 Sharon was not so fortunate. The Board of Education saw its first spending plan defeated at a town meeting last month, and is waiting to see if the new one will meet with the approbation  of taxpayers — and town officials. One selectman, John Mathews, has been outspoken in his criticism of the budget, saying that school administrators, staff and teachers are being given salary increases for the coming year that are too high. It took some courage for Mathews (whose wife is a teacher at Sharon Center School) to speak up.

But the board didn’t listen. Despite requests from the selectmen and the Board of Finance that pay raises be decreased this year and the budget increase kept as low as possible, they came up with a budget that included a 4-percent pay raise for Principal Karen Manning and 3.41-percent raises for “classified� staff (school employees who are not teachers and whose salaries and raises are not locked in by a contract).

Sharon taxpayers were incensed, and voted down the budget. In case their message wasn’t clear enough, they also held a special vote saying that they approve of the town budget, but not the school budget (in Sharon, the two budgets are usually voted on as one package).

The Board of Education then went back and reduced the principal’s pay raise to 2.25 percent. The classified staff will get 2.75- percent raises — if this budget passes at the next town meeting, which has been scheduled for Tuesday, June 9 (see story, page A5).

Meanwhile, the budget line item for teachers is increasing by 5.87 percent, with some teachers getting raises of less than 4 percent — but some getting more than that; these increases were negotiated with the union last year. Some have made the point that voters should know that teachers are only getting approximately 4-percent raises, not 5.87 or more, as reflected in the line item on the budget.

But they, like the Board of Education, apparently haven’t been listening to what voters are saying: Times are tough. Very tough. Taxpayers are having a hard time meeting their own household expenses. Very few Sharon residents are getting pay raises at their jobs. Many are fearful that they will soon be unemployed, if they are not already. Most are paying crippling health-care costs and insurance premiums (town and school employees for the most part don’t have to pay for the lion’s share of their insurance premiums; those costs are picked up by the taxpayers). It is tone-deaf, and insensitive, to say that taxpayers should uncomplainingly dig into their empty pockets to come up with pay raises for teachers because they are “only� 4 percent.

Some people have pointed out that the reductions in pay raises for the principal and classified staff make a difference of only about $4,000 to the bottom line of the budget. Anyone who says that isn’t listening to what the taxpayers are telling them: They are saying they find these pay raises, and the added taxes that will come from them, oppressive.

Sharon Center School is a treasure, and has many fine teachers and an excellent staff. Karen Manning has shown herself to be dedicated, efficient and intelligent in the way she runs the school. The vote against the school budget should not be seen as a vote of “no confidence� in her or the school employees.

It should be seen more as a cry of anguish from taxpayers who are in severe fiscal pain.

The people of Sharon are sending a message to the Board of Education. It’s time for the board to stop trying to justify those pay raises, and start listening to what the people are saying.