School Board Seeks Other Sources Of Funding

By Tanjua Damon

Addressing the Legislative Council’s request that it reduce the school district’s budget by an additional $200,000, the Newtown Board of Education voted Tuesday night to have Superintendent John R. Reed explore other alternatives to secure the funding. At stake are four new teaching positions.

Board member Margaret Hull urged the superintendent to go ahead and plan for the reduction of teaching positions, but to also explore other ways to fund one or more of the positions. She suggested looking into a state “class size” grant or a possible change in the funding formula for placement of out-of-district students for special education, changes in personnel, or bidding procedures that save extra money. If more money becomes available through these efforts, she asked the board to authorize the superintendent to proceed to fill the positions so far as these extra resources would permit. The suggestion was seconded by Lisa Schwartz.

Dr Reed told the board that he is not too optimistic that the Legislative Council is going to come back with additional dollars for the school district’s budget. But there are outside sources, including those mentioned by Mrs Hull, that can be explored, he said.

“You’ve got a number of options,” Dr Reed said. “While I still have a small hope that good news may come from the council, I’m not overly optimistic. We don’t have a play left.”

The board understands the town’s budget difficulties this year with the proposed 5/6 school and the possible purchase of Fairfield Hills. Now the board wants to concentrate on coming together to get the public’s support for this year’s budget that will go to vote in April.

“Everything we do in the next six weeks is to do everything we can to pass the budget,” Dr Reed said. “We need to rally around the flagpole.”

The original school budget asked for 17 new teachers. The school board made $600,000 in cuts from the initial budget of $43.2 million before it sent the budget to the Legislative Council in February. The council last week cut another $200,000, eliminating four more teachers, to reach the 7.5 percent increase requested by the council’s finance committee.

“I think there is a belief that we can find ways to just cut $200,000 or four teachers. There isn’t some magical $200,000,” Vincent Saviano, vice chairman of the school board, said. “This is a total of eight teaching positions. The town clearly has to understand in order to get this budget passed, we are getting half the teachers we need for next year. I think we understand that the town has a lot in front of them. We have to help with that as much as we can.”