TIVERTON — Two School Committee members running for reelection, chairwoman Denise deMedeiros and Sally Black, have turned down offers of endorsement from Tiverton Citizens for Change.

Two other School Committee candidates, Carol Herrmann and Deborah Pallasch, have issued a joint statement explaining why they declined to seek the TCC’s backing.

The organization, which grew out of a failed attempt to hold the increase in the tax levy to 5 percent in the current budget, made endorsements earlier this week.

“I appreciate the fact that they think I’m fiscally responsible,” deMedeiros said of the TCC.

DeMedeiros and the rest of the School Committee have taken a hard line in protracted negotiations with the teachers’ union, demanding an increase in their contributions to health insurance premiums,

something the TCC agrees with.

But at the Town Meeting last spring, TCC supporters attacked deMedeiros and other School Committee members on the size of the overall budget.

DeMedeiros says the current budget includes a modest 2.3 percent increase in operating expenses.

The TCC has made accusations without having all the facts, she said.

And she said she doesn’t like what she calls the negativity of some TCC members, alluding to letters to a local newspaper attacking the incumbent leadership of the Town Council and the Budget Committee.

With the Town Council, the Budget Committee and the School Committee working together, deMedeiros said, the increases in operations “were the lowest in history,” she said. “It really showed we were trying.”

The TCC has suggested that the School Committee failed to fully inform the community about the financial impact of the school bonds before voters approved an overhaul of all three elementary schools in 2004.

But deMedeiros said “a lot of these people didn’t even live in this town when this campaign was going on.”

Anyone who didn’t hear about the cost of maintaining three schools “wasn’t paying attention,” she said, particularly after voters rejected consolidating the three schools into one large building by a three-to-one margin in 2002.

“The idea that we somehow pulled the wool over people’s eyes, that bothers me,” deMedeiros said.

Black declined to give her reasons for declining the TCC’s offer of an endorsement, instead urging all citizens to continue working to meet the town’s financial obligations while maintaining a high quality education.

The TCC based its endorsements on candidates’ answers to a questionnaire.

The organization has not released the responses to the questions, which focused on candidates’ views on tax increases and taking on additional debt.

Carol Herrmann and Deborah Pallasch, candidates for School Committee, said they chose not to answer the TCC’s questionnaire.

“While we share the TCC’s desire for greater transparency and openness in town government, we were dismayed that none of their School Committee questions focused on student learning or achievement,” the candidates said.

“Our top priority as School Committee members will be to provide a high quality public education to all students with the limited dollars available to us,” they said.

gmacris@projo.com