Hjørring drops unpopular school cuts from budget deal

Hjørring City Council has scrapped several controversial school-saving proposals in its new budget agreement, DR reports, including plans to move the oldest pupils from the town’s schools into a shared upper-school programme at Muldbjergskolen.

Up to 300 parents and children demonstrated earlier in the week against the proposed cuts.

“We have really tried to shield our schools as much as we could,” Mayor Søren Smalbro of the Venstre party said.

However, the agreement includes the closure of elite sports classes and the Child and Youth Psychiatry Team. Parent contributions for school leisure schemes in Hjørring Municipality are also set to increase.

The municipality has been allowed to raise its tax rate by 0.09 percentage points without state sanctions, giving it an additional 12 million kroner in revenue from next year. The increase will give Hjørring the highest municipal tax rate in the country.

The Social Democrats are not part of the agreement, marking the first time in several decades that the party has been left outside Hjørring’s budget deal.

“We wanted to use half of the additional tax revenue to strengthen the school system further, but we disagreed with the parties behind the agreement,” said Mai-Britt Beith, the Social Democrats’ group leader on the city council.

According to Smalbro, the parties supporting the deal instead want to use the money to strengthen the municipality’s finances and low liquidity in the coming years.

Venstre, the Conservatives, the Denmark Democrats, the Socialist People’s Party and the Danish People’s Party support the agreement. The Social Democrats, the Social Liberal Party, the Red Green Alliance and the Vendelbo List are outside it.