Unanswered Questions On School Staffing Inefficiencies

To the Editor:

 I must respectfully disagree with Ronald J. Bienkowski’s letter last week titled “Multiple-Year Comparisons of School Costs Are Unfair.” I am a newly elected Board of Finance (BOF) member, but no stranger to critically reviewing financials. I would argue that to solely focus on year-over-year results without an understanding of significant macro longer-term trends is inadequate and suboptimal. The views expressed below are mine alone, and not those of the BOF.

Mr Bienkowski is in essence the “CFO” controlling roughly $70 million or 70 percent of the town’s budget. The CFO, as well as the superintendent of schools are responsible to “make sense” out of trends and to make the financial operations of the school system transparent to the taxpayers of Newtown who pay their salary. Below is the “unfair” multiple year comparison question and statistics I posed to Mr Bienkowski during the BOF review, to which neither he nor the school administration has provided a satisfactory analytical accounting for:

1. Total enrollment in 2006-07 was 5,668 students with FTE (full-time equivalents) of 728.25 or 12.85 FTE/100 students. This includes all school employees (administrators, nurses, etc).

2. Enrollment is projected to be 5,209 in 2012-13 with 734.35 FTE or 14.10 FTE/100 students. (Think about this fact. We have lost 459 students, literally a whole class of students since 2006.)

3 If we ran our school system with the same number of FTEs/100 students as we ran the school system in 2006, we would have 65 fewer FTE or a $4.4 million savings.

4. Question: After reviewing such an analysis how much should the school budget be reduced?

To be perfectly clear, I am not recommending a $4.4 million dollar cut to the school budget. However, the budget that will be voted upon includes a cut of $0. I am very disappointed with the school administration’s complete dismissal of such an analysis with no analytical attempt to explain this gap to the Newtown taxpayers. Now, after reading Mr. Bienkowski’ letter, I am even more troubled. If Mr Bienkowski, the “CFO,” the gatekeeper of the schools financial records, feels questions like the above are somehow “unfair” or foul play, then the above “inefficiencies” in the manner we run our school system will remain unexplained and perhaps continue to grow over time with the burden being shouldered on the backs of the Newtown taxpayer.

That being said, I want to commend the Board of Education for their review of the superintendent’s budget. However, their review was through the same lens as previous boards (i.e., year-over-year comparison) and did not focus on the adverse longer-term trends described above.

Absent a true accounting and understanding of our staffing trends we will continue to bake-in incremental staff to educate the same number of students. I will be voting No and encourage all fiscally concerned citizens to also vote No.

Richard J. Oparowski

4 Pheasant Ridge Road, Newtown                                April 18, 2012