Committee recommends proposed $246 million city school budget for approval
Feb. 13—A school board subcommittee is recommending the Manchester School District's tax-cap compliant Fiscal Year 2026 $246 million budget proposal be approved by the full board next week.
Members of the Finance and Facilities Committee voted Wednesday night to unanimously support the budget following a presentation by district administrators. The budget now heads to the full Board of School Committee for discussion and a public hearing at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 20, before being sent to the Board of Mayor and Aldermen for consideration.
Superintendent of Schools Jennifer Chmiel has proposed $246,050,206 for the tax-cap-compliant budget, plus $6.3 million for the school food and nutrition budget and $6.6 million for Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) projects.
"There's a lot to be proud of here," Ward 1 school board member Julie Turner said following the budget presentation.
City and school budgets for the next fiscal year can increase by 4.27%.
Sharon Wickens, the city's finance director, has notified aldermen of the official tax cap number, which is based on the three-year average change in the Consumer Price Index.
Manchester operates under a cap on property taxes established by a voter-approved amendment to the city charter. Generally referred to as a tax cap, the provision limits the total amount of money raised from property taxes, rather than the tax rate itself.
The cap limits the city's tax revenue to the average increase in the federal consumer price index, or CPI, during the three previous calendar years, plus the value of new construction.
The budget supports 11,865 Manchester School District students in addition to services at charter and parochial schools.
The Fiscal Year 2026 school budget proposal contains $112,136,883 in salaries (a $10.7 million increase over last year), including $203,359 for Superintendent Chmiel, $155,017 for Assistant Superintendent Nicole Doherty, $128,068 for Athletic Director Christine Pariseau Telge and $119,911 for Amadou Hamady, executive director of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice.
The budget also contains $11.3 million in transportation costs (a $3.7 million decrease from last year, due to transition to in-house home to school busing, $11.7 million in debt service, and $9.7 million to cover a $320,000 increase in costs for city services (including a 3% increase in costs for the Aramark custodial services contract and 5% increase for school resource officers from Manchester police.
The $6.6 million in CIP projects includes $300,000 for playground replacement, $1.2 million for the purchase of 11 buses, and $250,000 for information technology network infrastructure costs.
Chmiel was asked to assure committee members there is no "waste or fluff in the budget anywhere else that we could cut."
"Let me just say we would not build a budget and bring it before the board if there was waste or fluff, that would be irresponsible," Chmiel said. "Earlier in my remarks, I talked about the work that we've done with our principals and our department heads. In those conversations, we are reconciling line by line by line, each staff member that is associated with a building, we're cross referencing into our payroll system, and then we're looking at how those staff members are tied to maybe special ed. or general ed. services within our school. So we have gone through our budget, our staffing, piece by piece.
"We are digging deep to make sure that we have efficiencies across the system."
"I don't think any of us take asking the taxpayers for an extra $5 million lightly, but it is a wise investment in the future of our community," school board member Chris Potter said.
School board Vice Chairman Jim O'Connell cautioned those comparing the city budget to the school budget.
"People will make simple comparisons as they look at budgets over time," O'Connell said. "There'll be discussions on this budget in this chamber and elsewhere over the coming months and often the comparisons are not correct. When people will say the city spending went up by X and school district spending went up by Y. It's not as simple as that to compare apples to apples. For example the nurses — we have 65 or 66 nurses in this district. They were on the city side of the budget two years ago. They're now on the school district side.
"That's not the school district spending that extra money — it's shifted from one side to the other."
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