Schools Board Continues Budget Deliberations

By Eliza Hallabeck

A week after Superintendent of Schools Janet Robinson delivered her recommended expenditures for the 2012-13 fiscal year, the Board of Education continued its discussion of the budget on Tuesday, January 24.

The board heard reports on the individual special education, pupil personnel, curriculum, technology, and transportation budgets, and more.

Last Tuesday, January 17, Dr Robinson delivered her budget report recommending a 4.63 percent increase over last year’s budget, and a 5.31 percent increase if the board implements full-day kindergarten within the district.

The 4.64 percent increase represents a $71,122,794 budget, and the 5.31 percent increase represents a $71,579,456 budget.

Last year, the school district’s budget passed referendum at roughly $67,971,000.

Dr Robinson also told the school board this Tuesday, if the budget remained the same for the 2012-13 fiscal year, the contractual obligations and other scheduled increases would put the budget at a 2.26 percent increase.

The school board is set to inspect and deliberate its 2012-13 budget during for the next week. A public hearing is scheduled for Thursday, January 26, at 7:30 pm, at the Newtown Municipal Center, and the board is scheduled to finalize its budget on Tuesday, January 31. Once the budget passes the school board, it will go before the Board of Finance and the Legislative Council before going to referendum.

Newtown’s Director of Pupil Services Michael Regan spoke regarding his two budgets, special education programs and pupil personnel services.

Due to grants that are no longer available to the district, Dr Regan explained the budget for special education shows a larger increase over the previous year’s increase. The $6,912,247 budget is a 5.31 percent increase from the previous year. He also explained that out-of-district costs for students are expected to rise next year, along with costs associated with renting listening assistance devices.

“More students are requiring those,” said Dr Regan.

In the pupil personnel services budget, Dr Regan said additional positions for school counselors — one at Newtown High School, one at Newtown Middle School, and an increase in the high school’s director of guidance’s hours — are requested in the budget to help work toward fulfilling the Safe School Climate Act regulations.

“They need to be able to meet with students and provide a cadre of different activities for the students,” said Dr Regan about the counselors.

When speaking about the $665,783 curriculum and staff development budget, Assistant Superintendent of Schools Linda Gejda said, “The needs addressed here are curriculum revision, professional development, the development of assessments, because that will be another big area in terms of our new standards, and also to identify recourses and look for adoptions [that will prepare the district for 2015 mandates].”

In response to a question from board member Keith Alexander, Dr Gejda said decreasing the budget for text books each year makes her nervous, but she is also very concerned about getting the curricula across the district where it needs to be.

During the presentation for the technology budget, the district’s Director of Technology Carmella Amodeo said it is hard to make a smooth budget transition each year to funding technology, when replacing older technology within the district has been put off. The computers that are in the budget to be replaced at Newtown Middle School will be eight years old next year.

Board members discussed replacing the desktop computers with other electronic devices, and heard from Ms Amodeo about the middle school’s new wireless Internet system. Ms Amodeo said NMS has been wireless since the start of the school year, but no transition has been made yet to allow students to bring in their own electronic devices from home. The school is still looking into allowing students that option, she said.

“We are being very cautious as we look at rolling this out,” said Ms Amodeo.

When discussing the transportation budget for next year, Director of Business Ron Bienkowski said, “We’ve had, as you well know, big changes in transportation.”

From the 2011-12 fiscal year to the recommended 2012-13 budget, the transportation services budget shows a decrease of $379,296.

By the start of the 2012-13 school year, the school district is scheduled to begin contracted services with All-Star Transportation of Torrington, rather than Newtown’s traditional service providers, individually contracted owner-operators.

Mr Bienkowski said the line items in the budget show significant decreases across the board.

The biggest single line item, Mr Bienkowski said, is local student transportation, which will be $487,257 less than it was last fiscal year, as designated by All-Star’s bid for the contracted services.

One area expected to increase within the transportation budget, Mr Bienkowski said, is fuel costs, but that will not be solidly defined for another month or so until the district and town lock into new prices.

Also during the meeting, the school board voted unanimously to direct Gino Faiella, the district’s director of facilities, to use $150,000 from the town’s Capital Nonrecurring Fund, when the school district receives the money, to pay for repairs to Middle Gate Elementary School’s roof, projected to cost $140,000, and the remaining $10,000 of the money to finance replace gates at the top of stairwells within Newtown High School.