School Board Response

Missed The Mark

To the Editor:

The response to my letters in previous editions of The Bee by certain members of the school board missed the mark completely. First of all, it should be noted that not all Board of Education (BOE) members signed this letter, which leads me to infer that there is not unanimity among school board members on this issue.

The intent of my correspondence was to suggest to the public that the BOE should be making careful assessments of staffing levels in our schools as a means to control budget expenditures. Unlike contractual obligations, this is an area that our school board has much control over.

Those BOE members who have taken issue with my letters have challenged my figures and parsed words in order to defend what they probably perceived as criticism, but was nothing more than suggestions. The information presented in my letters was garnered from the school handbook and from conversations with school board members.

I was told that there are 420 students enrolled in this K-4 elementary school, which I indicated in my second letter. The school handbook, which I have before me as I compose this letter, indicates the following: classroom teachers…21; specialists...15; administrative...4; educational assistants...20; custodians...4. This is a total of 64 paid personnel. These BOE members should stop parsing words and playing semantics. Are there 64 paid personnel in this school or not?

Either the school handbook is incorrect and should have been edited before being distributed to parents, or there are in fact this number of paid personnel at a school with an enrollment of 420 students (or 460 as the revised number in their letter), which would thereby sustain my recommendation that staffing levels need to be examined.

Because I used the term “administrators” instead of “administrative,” the number used in my letter was challenged and the substance of my remarks was ignored. Although all staff categorized under the heading of “administrative” may not technically be “administrators,” they most certainly are paid personnel. Instead of playing word games with the content of letters, the BOE should be advised to consider the substance of these letters, which were framed to suggest the review of staffing levels, particularly when new requests for additional personnel come before them. In this present difficult economic climate and the recent history of failed school budgets, the school board has a mandate to keep budget increases as low as possible. The area of staffing levels is one they might wish to explore.

It was also stated in their letter that I implied that we have greater staffing levels than other school districts. This is a distortion of what I wrote. The only thing I implied was that perhaps we have more staff than is needed and I did not reference this remark to other school districts. The one comment in their letter that I most heartily agree with was the last sentence... “It is imperative that our community be provided with facts; misinformation undermines this process and does a disservice to our voters.” Amen.

George Caracciolo

Schoolhouse Hill Road, Newtown                          January 26, 2004