MANCHESTER — The Board of Mayor and Aldermen voted to send more money to the school district to hire teachers at its meeting Tuesday.

By a vote of 11-2, the aldermen voted to move $200,000 in contingency funds to the school district.

The move was opposed by Mayor Ted Gatsas, and by Aldermen Phil Greazzo and William Shea.

The vote came after Superintendent Thomas Brennan appeared before the board to answer questions about crowded classes and other problems facing the school district since the start of the school year.

Brennan told the aldermen that his administration was doing all it could to reduce class sizes, but that the problems were fundamentally financial.

“In my opinion, the only way to address this is with additional funding,” Brennan said. “I can only tell you that teachers and administrators are doing the best they can.”

Dozens of high school classes have more than 30 students, which officials in Hooksett and two other neighboring towns have said may violate their contracts to send students to the city.

Brennan has proposed hiring 12 more full-time teachers, at a cost of about $500,000.

The school board had voted to move bond money designated for the parking lot at the school administration building, but the move was rejected by the city's bond counsel.

It appears the district will be able to use another $300,000 in special education funds to hire teachers.

The vote by the aldermen could fill the gap that Brennan had sought to fill by eliminating some middle school and junior varsity sports programs.

Pension costs soaring

Looming over the debate over the school funding were new figures presented earlier in the evening showing a more than 20 percent increase in the pension costs the city and school district will face in the next fiscal year.

The city will have to pay $1.7 million more next year for its share of pension costs to the New Hampshire Retirement System, according to city Finance Director Bill Sanders. The school district will face an additional $2 million in costs, according to a letter from district Business Administrator Karen DeFrancis.

Altogether, the city faces an additional $5 million in anticipated pension and fixed salary increases. They would already put the city over the projected tax cap.

The school district faces an even greater escalation in costs: $6.3 million without step or cost-of-living increases, and $10.3 million with those increases.

The difference will depend largely on the outcome of negotiations with the teachers union for the contract that begins in the next fiscal year.

Gatsas has pointed to the unwillingness of the teachers union to make concessions on health care costs as one of the reasons for the staffing shortage facing the schools this year.

tsiefer@unionleader.com