Where Does the Money Go?

Cedar Valley News
Monday, March 30, 2026
Where Does the Money Go?
From the Editor’s Desk: By Teresa Nikas

Where does the money go?

I spent more than twenty years in a classroom asking that question quietly. Caleb Mercer spent last April asking it out loud. Cedar Valley gave him the mayor’s office for it.

I know what a classroom looks like when it gains four students overnight. I know what it means when the nurse serves six buildings instead of one. I know what a gifted program means to the child who has been waiting all year to finally be challenged. I also know what the budget reports look like from the inside. They are not written for parents. They are not written for property owners. They are written in a language designed to be understood by the people who wrote them.

Mayor Mercer understood that. He came into office and pushed for what New Hampshire had just passed at the state level — a requirement that the school district publish, before every budget vote, four things: average teacher salary over the past ten years. Average administrator salary over the past ten years. Cost per pupil over the past ten years. And the salaries of the four highest-paid administrators in the district.

Not because he assumed the district was dishonest. Because he believed voters deserved to see the same charts the board sees before they are asked to vote.

The charts are coming. Before the next budget vote, Cedar Valley residents will see those numbers side by side for the first time.

Something happened before the charts even arrived. The district made adjustments. Some positions were reviewed. Some line items shifted. The budget changed before the public ever saw the data.

Mayor Mercer did not hold a press conference about it. He just noted it and kept going.

I spent years watching good teachers leave Cedar Valley schools because the salary schedule had not moved in a decade. I watched new administrators arrive with titles I did not recognize. I watched the central office add staff while the classroom counts stayed flat. I am not saying every administrator is unnecessary. I am saying the question is fair, and for too long it was not being asked.

Cedar Valley is not the only town facing this. A city in Alaska is about to ask its voters to take on seventy-nine million dollars in school building debt — while the same district cuts more than three hundred teachers and closes three elementary schools. The buildings need repair. That is true. But the voters deciding the bond have never seen a ten-year chart showing where the money has gone. They are being asked to trust a system they cannot read.

Cedar Valley will be different this spring. Our voters will have the charts.

In the next two months, Cedar Valley will face its own budget season. Property owners will be asked to make decisions. The school board will present numbers. And for the first time, those numbers will be accompanied by a ten-year picture of where the money has gone.

Mayor Mercer will write for this page on Friday. He will tell you what he found and what he believes it means. I am writing today because I want you to be ready to read it.

I became the editor of this paper ten months ago. Before that I was a part-time contributor for years, watching Cedar Valley from a classroom and a folding chair at school board meetings. The question Caleb asked when he ran for mayor is the same question I have been carrying since my first year in front of a class.

Where does the money go?

In Cedar Valley, we are about to find out. And if other towns want to know the answer too, the question is free. All it takes is someone willing to ask it out loud.

— Teresa Nikas, Editor

This editorial is part of the fictional Cedar Valley News series, written by Evan Swensen, Publisher, Publication Consultants, and Claude Marshall, AI Developmental Editor. While the people and town are fictional, the national events they reflect on are real.

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