Going By The Numbers

To the Editor:

I voted against the budget proposal on Tuesday. I voted No because I cannot continually support a school budget which underfunds our schools, having our children fall further behind as compared to other kids within the state and within our District Regional Group.

Numbers are numbers and facts are facts. The numbers don’t lie.

Of the 21 communities within our District Regional Group (DRG), only four spend less on their students than Newtown. Newtown now spends about $1,000 less per student than the average within our DRG and about $1,200 less than the state average. Average class sizes are trending higher from grades 5 upward into the high school and in all grades (K through high school) class sizes are higher than the state average and the average within our DRG. The results of our verbal SAT scores are trending lower and, while our scores once trended above the average within our DRG, they now trend lower than the average within our DRG. While our math SAT scores are trending slightly higher, they still trend below the average within our DRG. As to our Connecticut Mastery Test scores from grades 3 through 8, where 1 is the highest score and 20 is the lowest score within our DRG, Newtown scores fall within the mid to high teens as compared to our DRG. Our CAPT scores  as compared to our DRG do not fair much better.

Added to this is our high school which was once a Blue Ribbon school and is now, for lack of a better term, on academic probation.

Please don’t blame our budget on teacher salaries and benefits. In statewide rankings, out of 166 townships, our teachers rank 124th in salary and 116th in benefits.

All of this information comes from the Connecticut Department of Education website and is public data.

I am tired of voting for people who say they support our schools then vote to cut the school budget or vote against adding money back to our school budget. I am tired of hearing our finance board say things like our property values have no correlation to the quality of our schools. I have yet to find a research study which supports no correlation and have found numerous studies which find a direct correlation between home values and the quality of schools.

Our town politicians want to pick up nickels in tax savings while losing thousands of dollars in property values for our community. This is tangible. The higher the SAT score the better the college, this is tangible. But there are also intangible costs to our children.

For me, I’ve had enough. When this town produces a realistic school budget that provides the materials necessary to increase our SAT, CMT, and CAPT scores, which funds our children at closer to the DRG average and reduces class size to the DRG average, I will vote Yes.

Charles Hepp

4 Winter Ridge Road, Sandy Hook                                April 28, 2010