On Wednesday, May 21st, the Region 15 Board of Education discussed further cuts to the original budget, which failed to pass during the first referendum. A slate of potential cuts were presented by Superintendent Botsford in order of their affect on the students. Four of the items that directly affect the kids were discussed: Books, Interventionists, MS Drama Teacher and Technology at PHS. The Board agreed that Interventionists and the Middle School Drama Teacher should be taken off the block. With books, they agreed to cut the proposed $100K budget line by 50% vs 75%, and they agreed to fund half of the needed 24 projectors at PHS. The percent increase without fully funding the HS technology will be +2.79%. The percent increase with fully funding the technology would be +2.83%. Four tenths of a point or less than $1 per Region 15 household will make the difference between our PHS students having computers in their classrooms. The projectors are needed to project the computer images onto the board, so without them, in essence it means not having a computer in the classroom, which is unacceptable in 2014. This is a basic need.

Please sign this petition, leave a comment, and join us at the next budget meeting on Tuesday, May 27th to let the Region 15 Board of Education know that we want our High School students to have classrooms that havebasictechnological needs for our students. Every voice counts.

Thank you.

We the undersigned, request the Region 15 Board of Education to include the full budget line item of $52,000 for 26 computer projectors, bringing the proposed increase to 2.83% for the 2014-2015 school year.