001Happy new year everyone. I'm Becky Rule, the principal at Kensington Elementary School. Thank you for joining me today to learn a little bit about what's behind the numbers of our school budget for the 2627 school year. Hi, my name is AJ Salazo and I go to the KES school. A lot of things are fun in the school, especially one year when we woke up and had a whole school field trip. That was the best field trip I've ever gone to. And another thing is our principal, Mrs. Rule, is a really nice principal and she is happy to see you whenever you walk in the door. Another thing that's fun about the school is there's always activities like kids night out, um, what else, and all the other fun activities that KES does. So, I want
002to thank KES for making this my favorite school ever. I've got Caleb with me. Tell me, what are some of the things that you like best about KES? >> I like recess and I like PE STEM. >> And what's some of your favorite things that you've done in STEM so far? >> Bbots. >> You like the programming the BBOT? They're a lot of fun. Hi, my name is Sarah Growthier. I'm a mom of three students here at Kensington Elementary School and I'm here to share that Kes is a small school with a small budget but with a very big heart. It does what it can with the resources that it has, stretching every dollar, finding ways to support our children. From my experience, every decision that faculty make is centered on helping our students feel
003safe, supported, and ready to learn. Even though their budget is modest, their commitment to their students is unlimited. As an example, the faculty at this school do so much more than anybody know. They go to football games, to te-ball games, to plays that people are on the ensemble. They financially contribute to fundraisers for their students. They don't have to do that. So, they teach more than just art and literature and math. They teach our students how to be kind, responsible, respectful humans into any community. That is priceless. Our core values here at KES are engaging students in meaningful learning, actively working towards building a positive community culture, and prioritizing the health and well-being of our staff and students. What matters most is that students want to come to school each day and that they feel
004safe, connected, and inspired to learn. When they leave us in fifth grade, it is important to us that they go out into the world as kind, confident, empathetic, self-driven, and academically competent students. So, what is driving our budget? This chart represents the biggest drivers to our school budget. First, the rising costs of health care, insurance, and retirement contributions are significant increases to our school budget. This is an obstacle not unique to Kensington Elementary, but is also being faced by many businesses and organizations in New Hampshire. You will see that of the $192,000 of total increases, the largest majority of that is coming from the increase in health and dental insurance. Our maintenance and facilities line is up about $37,000 as we look to tackle two larger projects in the building over the next few years.
005Our HVAC controls and replacing our boilers, which have been going strong for decades, maybe even longer than I've been alive, but it is now time for us to strategize for their replacement. We've worked closely with our facilities department and have created a new capital improvement plan which focuses on maintaining our school building as well as looking for efficiencies in our energy consumption. The cost of caring for the 20,000 square ft here at KES is increasing just like it is more expensive to maintain our homes. You will also see a change in our special education contracted services line which reflects an increase in students educational needs as well as increased behavioral support from a boardcertified behavior analyst or BCBA. KEES is committed to highquality instruction and providing services for all children which include students with individualized
006education plans. Special education services are not optional and we are legally required to provide them. Our budget reflects how schools function today in terms of these early interventions and we provide staffing and spaces for services such as occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech and language support. Other smaller increases include our first student bus contract, which is about $6,900. We've included $8,400 for an outside auditing expenses, $3,700 for increases to our food service program, $12,000 for the replacement of technology and devices, and an increase in our overall SAU assessment at about $5,900. One of the smaller but important changes is an increase in our books and curriculum line for $11,000. As we are preparing to purchase a new reading and writing program, there were re recent changes to state legislation and HB 1015 requires all New
007Hampshire schools to adopt evidence-based instruction based on the science of reading and KES is prepared for those changes. You will also notice a significant decrease in our staffing line. Given the current students in our building and those we anticipate coming to us next year, we're removing a classroom teaching position as well as reducing the time of our PE teacher, art teacher, and music teacher. All of these increases and decreases together total $192,493 or 4.28%. In New Hampshire, public schools are funded through a mix of state aid and local property taxes. But the key thing to know is this. State adequacy funding does not cover the real cost of educating students. In July 2025, the New Hampshire Supreme Court affirmed that the state's current base adequacy funding level is constitutionally inadequate and referenced $7,356 per student
008as a conservative minimum threshold while also leaving that solution to the legislature. Under current law, the base adequacy money is still in the low 4,000s per pupil. Because the state amount doesn't match actual costs, local property taxes make up the difference. This shortfall is even greater for our students with disabilities, whose cost of programming and specialized instruction are more than our general education students. As a result, New Hampshire communities like Kensington rely heavily on our local property taxes to make up for this difference. A significant portion of special education costs, about 83% is carried by locally raised taxes. Kensington Elementary School has seen a shift in the amount of grant funding that we re receive each year. We no longer receive title 2 or title 4 grants, which in the past have funded activities like
009our 4-day summer kindergarten camp, which is an important transition activity, as well as paying for our teachers attendance at our annual SAU16 summer institute. These activities and others have shifted into our regular budget and these grants are no longer available to us. This slide shows the change from the current school year to the proposed FY27 budget for the 2627 school year. The principal described the changes in the operating budget which consists of the general fund and food service fund. title, IDEIDA, and other grants were previously appropriated as part of the SAU budget. However, as the school district is the legal owner of the grants, the appropriation is being moved to reflect that. When the voters go to the ballot boxes, they will have a choice between the proposed budget we have just presented and the
010default budget. The default is the prior year budget plus or minus any contractual or mandatory obligations required by law or one-time expenditures in the prior year budget. Thank you for supporting our students and staff at KES. And please join us for the public hearing on Tuesday, January 6th, and participate in our deliberative se session coming up on Tuesday, February 3rd. And don't forget to vote on Tuesday, March 10th.