Office sought: Merrimack School Board

Gary G. Krupp

Age: 40

Address: 4 Ministerial Drive, Merrimack.

Years of residency: 6 years in Merrimack and N.H.

Family: Married with four sons ages 17, 13, 7 and 5.

Occupation: Sensor Systems Engineer at The MITRE Corporation, Burlington, Mass.

Education: Clio Area High School diploma, with honors, Clio Mich.; Associate of Applied Science degree in Logistics Management, Community College of The Air Force; Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering, summa cum laude, Mississippi State University; Master of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering, Air Force Institute of Technology.

Political history: Budget Committee, 2011-present.

Affiliations: U.S. Air Force, Merrimack Valley Baptist Church, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Military Officers Association and Dayton Society of Natural History.

Question: A petitioned article on the warrant proposes to do away with the School District Budget Committee. Do you support disbanding the committee, and why?

Answer: Yes, I support disbanding the Budget Committee. Over 80 percent of the school budget is related to salaries, benefits and special education. These items cannot be changed by the Budget Committee, drastically limiting its ability to affect the budget in any meaningful way. The existence of the committee also forces “budget season” to start four to six weeks earlier than necessary, pushing the School Board budget deliberations into the holidays when the public is distracted. With no Budget Committee, the School Board would hold the public hearing after the holiday season allowing voters to engage the body that not only controls the bottom line budget number but also the individual budget line items. Lastly, the Budget Committee process keeps department heads in “budget mode” for far too long. As a taxpayer, I want my school district leaders to develop sound, defensible budgets but then return their focus to the management of their respective departments. Instead, the current process ties up these officials for four to six months working on budgets and defending budgets at various reviews. I am a member of the Budget Committee and I am voting yes on Article 6 to disband it.

Question: Seven teaching positions and a school administrator job are set to be cut under the district’s proposed $65.5 million budget. Can Merrimack schools absorb more cuts? What measures should be taken to keep spending level amid increasing insurance and other costs?

Answer: Yes, but not to teaching staff. Enrollment numbers are down more than 700 students from the opening of the middle school and projected to continue to decline another 300 in the next five years. This decrease offers the district a unique opportunity to reorganize from a six-school model to a five-school model. While I would ask administration to develop the reorganization plan, I think that the numbers support moving the sixth grade into the middle school while simultaneously shifting the fifth grade back to the elementary schools. This change would allow us to trim administrators and support staff saving as much as a million dollars or more off the budget without cutting teachers or negatively impacting education. The change would also help solve another long-standing problem, the inadequacy of the current SAU/Special Education offices. By freeing up the James Mastricola Upper Elementary School (JMUES), the district can execute the JMUES relocation option it studied in 2010, avoiding at least $1.3 million in capital expenditures under the current plan to build a new facility. This reorganization is a plan that can be executed within a year, if the will of the board is behind it.