HAVERHILL — Voters will consider a petitioned article requiring the school district to cap its budget at the state per-pupil spending average, which could result in millions of dollars in spending cuts if it passes.

On Feb. 7, the district received a petition calling for a budget cap of $20,323 per pupil, which the petition says is the “Current NH State average.”

That number, however, is the state average for the 2022-23 fiscal year.

The statewide average operating cost per pupil as of Jan. 15, 2025 is $21,545, according to the New Hampshire Department of Education.

The Haverhill Cooperative School District’s per-pupil spending for the current fiscal year is $22,463.

“To our best estimate, it would be around a $6 million cut, based on the way the petition was written,” Haverhill School Board Chairman David Robinson said by phone Thursday.

If approved by 60% of voters in March, the petitioned warrant article could result in the closing of one of the district’s schools and cut the majority of its nonacademic programming, Robinson said.

“That means athletics, the arts, music, and it would potentially cut around 50% of our certified staff,” he added.

The district serves roughly 650 students in grades pre-K to 12 in three schools: Woodsville Elementary School, Haverhill Cooperative Middle School, and Woodsville High School.

The board approved a budget for the 2026 fiscal year of $17.7 million, which is a 5.1% increase from last year’s budget.

The local property tax rate is projected to be about $13.20 per $1,000 of home value, up from $11.70 last year.

For a home valued at $300,000, that would be a local property tax bill of $3,960 for the 2026 fiscal year.

The district held a public hearing on the warrant article on Feb. 20, which was attended by roughly 60 people in person and another 14 on Zoom. Nobody at the meeting spoke in favor of the spending cap. All of those who addressed the board were opposed to it.

“We are struggling just like everyone else, but the solution cannot be to gut our schools,” North Haverhill resident Stephanie Marston said at the hearing.

The petitioned article in Haverhill comes after the New Hampshire Legislature passed a law — SB 383 — in October allowing voters to limit how much a school district may spend on each student. The petition arrived at the district without explanation, SAU 23 Superintendent Dolores Fox said by phone last week.

The first of 32 verified signatures on the petition is that of Matthew Bjelobrk, a North Haverhill resident who has served on the Selectboard and is a current member of the Haverhill Planning Commission.

In 2020, Bjelobrk competed to become the Republican Party’s candidate in the race for New Hampshire’s Second District seat in the U.S. House, losing in the primaries.

Bjelobrk did not return phone and social media requests for comment by deadline.

Fox said she doesn’t think the petitioners understand the complexities of the school budgeting process. “The misunderstanding often is that you take the budget and divide it by the number of students, and you get cost-per-pupil,” she said.

“That’s not how the state calculates it.”

The state removes tuition, transportation, bond payments, revenue before dividing by the number of students enrolled, Fox said.

“The per pupil cost figure, or the cost per pupil, doesn’t include or account for all of our expenses that we need to effectively run a school system,” she added.

Robinson sees the School Board’s task as informing voters about the possible impacts of the budget cap.

“We’re just going to lay that out for people so they understand it, and then leave up to the taxpayers to decide,” he said. “We understand that the taxpayers of this community are hurting, like most communities across the state of New Hampshire right now.”

Voting on the Ha verhill Cooperative School District warrant will take place on Saturday, March 15 at 9 a.m. at the middle school. Ballot voting for officers will take place on Tuesday, March 11 from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. at 2975 Dartmouth College Highway, North Haverhill.

Christina Dolan can be reached at cdolan@vnews.com or 603-727-3208.