After its school board cut nearly $500,000 of its fiscal year 2026 budget last week, residents of Caribou and Stockholm’s RSU 39 added more than $130,000 back in at a public meeting Wednesday.
The budget will face its third referendum vote on Sept. 9, with polls open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Caribou Wellness Center and from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Stockholm Town Office.
The process has now dragged on for well over three months and is a prime example of the school budget challenges that have gripped communities throughout the state this summer.
School started in RSU 39 Wednesday, meaning it will go at least three weeks into the year without an approved budget. If voters nix the budget this time, the district will operate on the $24.5 million budget residents advanced until a fourth referendum is held.
Looking to avoid that scenario, the RSU 39 school board made significant cuts of $475,716 that, if approved, would have lowered the district’s ask of Caribou taxpayers by more than $230,000 below the previous year.
The biggest cuts include eliminating three existing non-teacher positions, deferring the hiring of an innovation teacher and curriculum coordinator and reducing the working schedule of a nurse and two secretaries.
But residents on Wednesday approved amendments to add $109,500 to Article 1 of the budget, which covers regular instruction, and $25,000 to Article 5, which oversees student and staff support.
The intention of the Article 1 amendment, a resident said, was to return the funds to hire the innovation teacher, a cut that faced backlash in an Aug. 13 school board meeting. The latter amendment would restore a nurse to a full working schedule.
However, as school board chair Lindsey Theriault noted, funds added by amendment in a public budget meeting cannot be specifically earmarked for anything within an article.
The additions bring the budget to $89,574 below fiscal year 2025, still a reduction, but not as significant as a week prior.
The overall reduced budget is a significant shift from the previous fiscal year, where a $1.4 million district increase shouldered Caribou residents with more than $1 million in additional property taxes.
Taxes in Stockholm, which has a population of around 250, will be unaffected by the budget cuts. Residents were already set to receive a roughly 5 percent decrease in the district’s ask over the previous year.
Stockholm residents voted in favor of the budget in both previous referendums, but it wasn’t enough to overcome votes from Caribou, which has more than 7,000 residents.
Caribou voters decidedly shot it down in both referendums, the first and second time that an RSU 39 budget has ever been rejected at the polls.
