Letter to the Editor: Make It Four. $52.9 Million Now, $151.9 Million Next Month

The views stated here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the editors of this newspaper. We welcome supporting or opposing views on any published item. Received August 15, 2026.

Heather Pach’s letter says she is not writing as a Board of Education member. She chairs the Board of Education that adopted this budget. Her letter is a defense of her own Board’s work, and readers deserved that fact beside her byline. They deserved a number, too. Her letter defends a $52.9 million budget without a single dollar figure. Here are three: After the towns voted No in May, the Board cut $388,000. After the second No, $438,000. After the third, $755,000. Each No cut deeper than the last, and not one of those dollars moved until voters said No.

“Trimmed to the bone”? Across the three rounds of cuts since voters first said No, every position eliminated came from a school, while every Central Office salary went up, the Superintendent’s by 10%. The budget still deposits $540,000 into a reserve that already holds about $2.35 million, for a capital plan that nobody has published. The bone is always in a classroom, never in an office.

She calls 20% turnout “a silence that speaks volumes.” Last year’s budget passed on 2,086 ballots, below the turnout she now laments. Where was the letter about silence then? Last month 2,930 of us voted, the most in at least three years, and the 1,648 who said No outnumber the 1,152 Yeses that passed last year’s entire budget. To the families her letter alarmed, no referendum can take away a service written into your child’s IEP. Federal law guarantees those services whether this budget passes or fails. It is wrong to let you fear otherwise.

And here is the reason to make it four: the audit. It was due to the state on December 31, 2025, more than seven months ago. It still has not been filed. Last year’s audit returned $1,048,457 to the towns. This budget assumes zero comes back, and nobody can say whether that zero is real. Meanwhile, Tuesday’s ballot is $52.9 million, and the next one, proposed for September 24, 2026 is a $151.9 million high school project. More than $200 million in decisions inside a month, from a board that has not closed last year’s books. No is what “show us the books” sounds like on a ballot.

And a No does not close a school. Until a budget passes, the district keeps operating on last year’s budget, as it has since July 1; last year, the schools opened on time all the same. The day the audit is filed, and the cutting starts in the office instead of the kindergarten, Yes gets easy. Until then, three Nos, each worth more than the last. On Tuesday, August 25th, make it four. Vote and demand fiscal accountability.

Eric Nunes, Ph.D.
Killingworth