New members King and Volpicelli (foreground) hear from School Committee attorney Rick Updegrove (center).

The Portsmouth School Committee held their annual retreat this weekend, and at today's session, newly elected members Marilyn King and Angela Volpicelli heard sobering presentations from the school attorney Rick Updegrove and Finance Director Christine Tague. The 4-hour meeting at the Hampton Inn in Middletown this morning was also attended by School Committee Chair Dick Carpender, Supt. Susan Lusi, and Asst. Supt. Colleen Jermain, and the budget and the school committee's role were major topics.

"That's something you're probably going to be jumping into right away, given the state situation," said Updegrove, predicting the likelihood that the committee would be required to vote on budget changes during the current year.

Updegrove also briefed the committee on the importance of maintaining school policies. "When you have a challenge, the first thing the attorney does on the other side is request the policy book," he said, urging a continuation of the Policy Subcommittee review process.

The legal requirements for contracts and bidding were outlined, as well as the requirements for complying with Open Meetings and Ethics rules. Labor contracts were a separate topic for the second half of his session, with Updegrove describing the regulatory context and legal issues, particularly regarding negotiations given that the district will shortly be going into contract talks with the NEA. Confidentiality is not just important to ensure talks move forward, Updegrove noted, but also because "violating ground rules is an unfair labor practice, and you'll find yourself in front of the Department of Labor."

After delivering more than two hours of technical detail, Updegrove wished the committee luck. "It's not really as bad as I make it sound," he said.

The rest of the session was a presentation by Christine Tague on how to read the monthly financial reports she makes to the committee and a preliminary look forward to next year's budget.

For the current year, the numbers are as good as they could be, with the schools running slightly below projected expenditures and building principals advised to limit their discretionary budget to 80% of their allocation. Not that those line items amount to a large chunk, since the majority of the budget is managed at the District level "The total allocated out to the schools was about $400K," said Tague.

Looking forward to next year, the numbers — even before factoring in any possible state aid cuts — look grim. The maximum levy increase of 4.75% next year would amount to $1.27M, before factoring in one-time revenue offsets that bring the number down to $873K. Just rolling the current expenses forward with average increases would cost $914K.

And since there have already been several years of belt tightening, chair Dick Carpender noted, there are very few places to look for reductions in the budget. "There's no place to go, to say we're not going to do this," said Carpender.

"My background is on the municipal side," said Tague, explaining that even she, as a town finance person in her previous job, had thought that there was extra money to be found in school department budgets. "I thought that's where all the money was. That's why I came over," she joked, "I mean, I thought there was a lot to go around."

"You came to the wrong place," said Lusi drily.

Marilyn King suggested that one thing the committee should look into was offering several different levels of health care program as part of the new contract negotiations with the NEA.

The group discussed regionalization of curriculum as well as working with ongoing state efforts to find efficiencies. "We all have to be creative," said Volpicelli.