FUD — A Sign Of Spring

To the Editor:

I found my first sign of spring in my inbox recently — a passionate letter from a concerned parent regarding the 2011-2012 budget. I have received these letters for years; in fact, in the past I have been the parent that forwarded these e-mails because I have two school-aged children.

But times change, the economy changed, my taxes increased. I continued to think that to support education in this town I needed to believe everything the BOE was telling me.

Let’s take a look back at some of the e-mails from last year: “We could lose up to 50 teachers” and “we will lose after school activities,” and “the board of finance is going to cut $2.5 million.” These e-mails are what I now refer to as FUD. These e-mails perpetuate Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.

Let’s look at the Board of Finance and their role in this town. I was shocked to find out that they aren’t money misers, they aren’t the gatekeepers, and they aren’t anti-education. Believe it or not what I learned is that many of these board members are parents of young children who attend Newtown Schools.

At the same time I started to follow the money.

The BOF reduced the increase the Board of Education requested by $2.5 million and we voted down the budget twice before the council added back a statistically insignificant amount of money, $200,000.

Here we are in February and it is time to make some data-driven decisions moving forward. We have a surplus of over $600,000. We have a BOE who have had to address significant accounting issues this year culminating with an audit which confirmed we are not in compliance with state statutes. We have hired an administrator at Head O’ Meadow, a secretary for BOE, a gym teacher at NHS, fixed the NHS pool, hired a reading teacher at Reed School, paid for outside administrative consultants at Reed, and seem to be able to afford exorbitant snow removal costs.

The BOE has put forth a budget that is currently before the BOF. These budgets have moving parts, these budgets assume risk, but had the BOF not made appropriate reductions last year, wouldn’t we be sitting on a $3 million surplus right now?

In the end I am grateful that there was oversight and control of my tax dollars.

These leaders make unpopular decisions at times, but take a closer look and you may realize that in the end they have the best interest of the town at heart. And we may even have to admit that money isn’t always the answer.

So the next time you open the FUD e-mail consider it an invitation to get involved in your local government. Question the source, fact check, attend meetings, and ask questions. If we want accountability in Newtown it begins with every individual making a commitment to get involved.

Respectfully,

Caren Wellman

33 Boggs Hill Road, Newtown                                       March 2, 2011