By KATHRYN FLAGG

BRANDON — Otter Valley Union High School board members dialed back severe spending plan cuts at a board meeting last week, instead settling for an estimated $322,000 in cuts that will spare, in part, the French and tech education programs.

The board will meet again on Jan. 7 to vote on the $11 million “Plan B” spending proposal, which will be put before voters on Town Meeting Day. While minor revisions still need to be made to the budget, Otter Valley Principal Dana Cole-Levesque said that he expected full board support for the spending plan at the Jan. 7 meeting.

The proposed spending plan will decrease the Otter Valley homestead tax rate by 1 cent, to $1.23 per $100 of assessed property value, the board estimated last week. That is roughly in line with the board’s goal of keeping the tax rate equal.

But when board members dug into spending plan discussions in earnest last month, it was per-pupil spending, and not homestead tax rates, that the board was most interested in holding steady.

In the face of a shrinking student population — more than 100 students will graduate this year, and a smaller seventh-grade class is slated to replace them — keeping per-pupil spending level would have required around $500,000 in cuts from the administration’s initially proposed spending plan.

Those cuts would have axed the school’s tech education program (which includes shop and drivers’ education classes) and eliminated the French program — a prospect that drew around 85 members of the public to a Dec. 17 hearing.

It was in the wake of this meeting, Cole-Levesque said, that the board charged administrators with going back to reevaluate spending plan cuts.

By JOHN FLOWERS

VERGENNES — The 2009 legislative session is just getting off to a start this week, but Addison County’s only freshman lawmaker has already built a new coalition under the Golden Dome.

The loosely knit collection of more than 30 Statehouse newbies is calling itself the “Freshmen ’09ers,” a bipartisan group that has pledged to periodically caucus and help each other learn the parliamentary ropes under the Golden Dome during what is expected to be a very difficult, cash-strapped session.

“I’m very excited,” said Rep. Diane Lanpher, D-Vergennes, and coordinator of the Freshman ’09ers. “I’m looking forward to it. I know it’s a tough time and I know it’s going to be an extremely difficult session.”

Lanpher, 53, is a Vergennes city councilor who was elected to one of the Addison-3’s two House seats in a tight election this past November. With the campaigning finally over, Lanpher and the other newly elected freshmen legislators have been going through orientation sessions at the Statehouse to get their bearings so they can hit the ground running when the gavel drops this week.

Lanpher has been enjoying the tutelage, delivered by the legislative council, sergeant at arms and other Statehouse staff.

“Being elected is like being given by the voters a very powerful vehicle,” Lanpher said. “The orientation process was like allowing (the freshmen) to have the racetrack all to ourselves to practice with all of the real players — with the legislative council, the media and the Vermont Supreme Court.”

The incoming class was able to preside over a simulated budget cutting session, listening to testimony and then breaking up into smaller groups to consider action.

By ANDY KIRKALDY

VERGENNES — Personnel changes are helping Vergennes Union Elementary School officials keep proposed 2009-2010 spending in check. The draft $3.54 million budget that the VUES board will look at later this month — probably on Jan. 18 — calls for a increase of 1.7 percent that is well below inflation.

That spending plan calls for a spending hike of just about $60,000 over the current budget of $3.48 million.

Given that officials had to budget an extra $20,000 for fuel and add in $33,000 to replace lost federal support for reading and preschool programs, and that teachers’ salaries are rising with inflation at about 4 percent, Principal Sandy Bassett said he is happy the VUES board and Vergennes, Panton and Waltham residents can look at a modest spending hike.

“I was obviously not doing handsprings down the hallway about not doing some things we’d like to be doing, but these are austere times,” Bassett said. “I’m hopeful that my community will see that as another austere budget brought forward to them.”

Helping to keep spending in check is the impending retirement of two veteran teachers. Bassett said their experience will be missed, but that they are at the top of the salary scale, about $20,000 each over the projected starting salary of their replacements.

“We won’t be hiring folks at the top of the hiring scale,” he said. “For a small school like mine, that’s a substantial savings.”

At the same time, Bassett said projected changes in the student population mean that two aides will no longer be needed, resulting in a similar savings.

“We reduced two para-educator positions, which is a significant amount of money,” he said.

By ANDY KIRKALDY

VERGENNES — Facing a $224,000 deficit due to last winter’s soaring fuel bills and to trouble with the school’s heating and ventilation system, Vergennes Union High School officials slashed almost $200,000 of supplies, equipment and materials from a December draft budget in order to keep their proposed 2009-2010 spending increase at 4.9 percent.

At its Jan. 12 meeting, the VUHS board will consider and could still make changes to the resulting final draft, which calls for a roughly $400,000 hike to a proposed 2009-2010 spending plan of about $8.9 million.

That budget will not cross the spending threshold that would trigger a two-tiered budget vote under Vermont school finance law Act 82 that takes effect this spring, Addison Northwest Supervisory Union officials said.

VUHS Co-principal Ed Webbley said the school’s teachers worked hard to keep spending in line given the current budget deficit, which includes $135,000 in higher-than-expected fuel costs alone, with most of the rest attributable to repairs to the heating and ventilation system.

“We got pounded on the heating oil,” Webbley said in an interview this week.

He said earlier budget drafts already reflected a 15 percent decrease in supplies, field trips and materials for educational programs, and that most of the most recent round of $198,000 in cuts came from those areas.

Every department except English, which Webbley said received a $3,000 boost because of lagging reading and writing scores at the 11th grade level, saw further cuts.

“Everybody budgeted at 15 percent below this year’s budget for next year, except for two departments that budgeted flat, and those were English and science. And we ended up increasing English,” Webbley said. “We cut $121,249 just from instruction.”