Art and music at Sunderland Elementary, police coverage among potential cuts if override fails

SUNDERLAND — To plan for an override as well as the possibility of its failure to pass, Sunderland Select Board and Finance Committee members are reviewing potential cuts, including the art and music programs at Sunderland Elementary School.

On March 9, Select Board and Finance Committee members asked departments to craft a fiscal year 2027 budget with a 5% decrease from their fiscal 2026 figures. In addition, to prepare for the possibility of residents voting down an override, the Select Board and Finance Committee also asked departments to prepare a budget with a 20% decrease from fiscal 2026.

According to Select Board Chair Nathaniel Waring, many department heads did not provide a budget reduced by 20%, stating that a reduction that significant would prevent their departments from functioning.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Darius Modestow, superintendent of the Frontier Regional and Union 38 school districts, outlined cuts at Sunderland Elementary that would result from a flat budget, or 0% increase, from fiscal year 2026. He said a reduced budget would entail eliminating art, music and the library, as well as a school adjustment counselor, an instructional assistant and a math interventionist.

“Devastating is the word I would use,” Waring said of the cuts with the flat budget. “We would be losing half of our school.”

“It would definitely have a negative impact on the programming we provide, that is for darn sure,” Modestow said.

He added that cutting programs like art and music would likely lead to a “ripple effect” of Sunderland residents enrolling in nearby elementary schools that provide these programs, thus redirecting funds to other districts. According to Modestow, this trend occurred after the failed override in 2009 when “more than a handful of families” choiced out of Sunderland Elementary and never returned to the district.

Modestow said the aforementioned cuts would be in addition to those from the current draft of the school budget if the Sunderland School Committee approves it.

The budget draft includes a 10% increase of $358,646 from fiscal year 2026, a drop from the initially proposed 18.3% increase. To scale back the hike, administrators recommended reducing the physical education teacher’s hours, and combining the two kindergarten classes into one class and the two fourth grade classes into one class, which would lead to one kindergarten teacher, one fourth grade teacher and an instructional assistant being cut.

Modestow said the initially proposed increase of 18.3% came from an “unprecedented” increase in the needs of Sunderland students.

“I’ve never seen any elementary schools grow like that in one year. It is a need that doesn’t usually hit a school this size in one year,” Modestow said. “We will provide those services to the students as we are required to, but it does require us, if we don’t have the increased budget, to cut elsewhere to meet the needs of the students in a different capacity.”

For the Police Department, a budget reduced by 5% from fiscal year 2026’s figures would entail cutting part-time police officers and a full-time police officer in training, along with eliminating police coverage on holidays and reducing overnight coverage. According to the town website, the department consists of four full-time police officers, not including the trainee, and three part-time officers.

“The last thing I want to hear is someone having a bad situation because we cut one officer,” Finance Committee member Joe Elias said.

Waring said the Police Department did not provide a budget with a 20% reduction, stating that a cut of that size would “completely decimate the department.”

At the library, a budget reduced by 5% would result in flat wages for the library director and support staff. A 20% reduction would involve eliminating key library programs that would weaken its eligibility for several funding sources, Waring said.

While Waring and Finance Committee Chair Valerie Voorheis said town department cuts, or “belt tightening,” are necessary to settle on an override percentage that town residents can afford, Waring stressed that “different departments have different asks.”

“We have to pass this override,” Waring said. “If it doesn’t happen, it will be catastrophic and we won’t have a functioning town in many ways.”

At a Select Board and Finance Committee joint meeting next week, the members plan to review calculations of the town departments’ 5% reduced budgets, a flat budget with no increase from FY26 and the initially requested FY27 budgets to settle on a percentage for the override, which will likely fall between 4 and 8%.

Looking ahead, the Select Board and Finance Committee members plan on collaborating to help prevent future budget issues.

“There’s a real opportunity moving forward to have really strategic conversations … to really figure out where our gaps are, what do we need to do and what can we refine,” Finance Committee member Allison Dean said.

“We need to stop thinking of it as off-budget season,” Waring agreed. “It’s always budget season when you have this kind of budget, because, to be honest, if we started having harder conversations about this in July of last year, we would’ve been in a much better position now.”

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