Manchester's Board of Aldermen got it right last week when 10 members of the board voted to override the veto of Mayor Ted Gatsas, thereby adopting a budget that provided about $2 million more in funding to the Manchester School District than the mayor wanted.

It was an interesting process to observe. The mayor's budget proposed to spend about $150 million on schools, which was the same as last year but about $12 million less than what is necessary to fund programs at current service levels. It would have decimated the city's schools.

There are those who will say “decimate” is an exaggeration. Not so. “Decimate” comes from a Latin term used to describe killing one out of 10 Roman legionnaires, usually as a punishment for mutiny or cowardice. The mayor's budget would have caused 164 layoffs of the district's 1,700 employees, about 10 percent, so “decimate” actually is pretty accurate.

Future Manchester students may not learn about the derivation of the word decimate, since the school board still is considering eliminating Latin from the curriculum. The elimination of Latin can only be considered a dumbing down of Manchester's schools. When I complained about this to one school board member, he said they weren't eliminating Latin, just the teaching position. I'm not sure how the kids will learn to translate Caesar's commentaries on the Gallic Wars without an instructor, but I digress.

The mayor may consider school employees mutinous, since they would not give the health care concessions he wanted. However, his failure to convince the city's educators to do so is his failure. Throughout his years as an elected official, he has given little praise to the work of the city's teachers, principals, paraprofessionals, support staff and the rest of those who work in the district. Instead, he has focused on whether teachers are wearing the appropriate footwear.

According to one alderman, the mayor knew that his budget was a disaster for the school district. When explaining his veto override vote, Alderman Joe Levasseur said the mayor had told him that the school district would not be able to function with those 164 vacant positions. If Levasseur reported his conversation with the mayor correctly, then the mayor thought that his budget number would make it difficult to provide a proper learning experience for the city's children. In that case, when Alderman Joyce Craig, working with Alderman Pat Long, produced a budget that provided an additional $2 million to city schools while providing a lower tax increase than the mayor's budget, shouldn't the mayor have supported that budget?

It would have been easy for the mayor to say, “I tried, but I could not get the teachers and principals to change their positions. I don't like it, but the kids come first. We'll try for a better solution next year.” Instead, Mayor Gatsas did his utmost to defeat the Craig/Long budget.

Watching the meeting on TV, the mayor's anger at the board was almost palpable. His stated reason for opposing the aldermen's budget was that it uses “one-time dollars” to save approximately 54 school district positions. He threatened to remind the board that they had used “one-time dollars” every chance he could. This led to a classic, only in Manchester moment.

Alderman Levasseur, proving that two can play the reminder game, reminded the mayor that he had changed his position on rehiring firefighters after having a couple of Mai Tais while on vacation in Aruba. The mayor angrily retorted that he did not drink Mai Tais.

It was almost funny, except that the mayor had just chosen to deny drinking Mai Tais, while never denying that he had told Levasseur that the schools would not be able to function under his budget. There is something terribly wrong with that picture.

Overall, it was a bad week for the mayor on the education front. In addition to not getting his way on the school budget, the New Hampshire Department of Education released an audit blasting the school district. The mayor responded by attacking the report, stating that interviews with school staff were done the week that pink slips were handed out. He seemed to miss the point that it was his budget that had caused the pink slips to be handed out.

He was upset that the results were not released to him first so that he did not have a chance to respond before the report was issued. A better reaction would have been to release the report to the public with a statement that school officials would review it and respond to the deficiencies. Hopefully, cooler heads will read the audit and address the issues raised.

And so ends the budget saga of 2012. Despite the huffing and puffing, 10 of the 14 aldermen did the right thing. Good for them.

Kathy Sullivan is a Manchester attorney and member of the Democratic National Committee. She was chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party from 1999-2007.