School Board Opposes Proposed Charter Changes

By Tanjua Damon

School officials foresee considerable challenges in preparing an effective budget if the budget process is altered as proposed by the Charter Revision questions up for voter approval on November 6.

After meeting with the Charter Revision Commission in early October, Board of Education members realized that the budget timeline had significant changes that affect the school district’s budget process. At a special Board of Education meeting on October 18, the board voted that because of the time schedule change of the budget process, they could not support the proposed charter revision changes.

Under the current budget process, the school board has to submit its budget to the Legislative Council by Wednesday, February 20, 2002. With the proposed charter changes, the Board of Education would have to submit their budget to the Board of Finance in January, a month earlier. The budget would also be voted on a month later in May rather than April.

There are three areas of the school district budget that would be greatly impacted by the proposed timetable change – hiring teachers, capital projects, and the 5/6 school.

Hiring teachers is becoming more and more competitive. With surrounding districts paying teachers more, Newtown attracts teachers because of its successful education environment, according to Superintendent of Schools John R. Reed. With the current budget process, Newtown is one of the first towns to pass a budget. This allows the school district to hire teachers early.

“The board’s concerns are the efficient operation of the school system. The sooner we know the actual resources we have to spend for the students who come here, the better job we’re going to do in operating the school system that is run here.”

“It would be significantly detrimental to this school system to not know what the budget would be until the later part of June,” he said. “To plan appropriately, we need to know what the resources will be.”

The proposed changes would bring an initial vote the fourth Tuesday in May, but if the budget did not pass a second vote would be taken in mid-June. If the budget did not pass after a second referendum, a town meeting would be the third step to try to approve the town budget.

“This significantly extends the time period for deliberations on the board budget,” Dr Reed said. “The later you go into June and school is out, the more challenging it is to maintain a focus on the budget deliberations.”

With the proposed charter changes, principals and teachers would have to begin working on their budget when the students headed back to the classroom.

“The teachers are trying to nurture a community it their classrooms. We don’t want their focus to be on the budget the first three weeks of the school year,” Dr Reed said. “We want teachers to launch that year with enthusiasm and focus.”

Several items in the school budget are determined by analyzing trends, according to Director of Business for Schools Ron Bienkowski. The school district has to estimate items on the budget as it is, but if they were to have to deliver the budget a month earlier, more estimating will have to take place.

“A lot of your budget trends develop during January and February. So if you are pushing the date up, we’re going to have a lot more estimates,” Mr Bienkowski said. “With administering and operating, there is a lot of things we need to do internally. If principals don’t know what they have in their budgets until mid-July, it doesn’t lend itself toward managing a good budget.”

Mr Bienkowski was hoping that the school budget would get additional time to work on their budget instead of the less time with the proposed changes.

“I was hoping to have a few more weeks in the other directions,” Mr Bienkowski said. “Time could be better spent.”

Awarding bids for capital projects also comes into play with the proposed budget timeline. It will become challenging for the school district to contract out work if a budget is not in place early on. Schools are only closed for two months and many projects are best completed when students are not in school.

“We can’t award a bid if we don’t know what the budget is,” Mr Bienkowski said. “If we can’t give a commitment, they are not going to award us a project.”

“Normally by mid-April we know what the Legislative Council has done,” Board of Education chairman Elaine McClure said. “When we know what the council has done we look at whether is will pass or not [by the town].”

The school district is also preparing for the opening of the 5/6 school in 2003. This is going to be a complex budget year for them with planning for the needs of the new school. If the charter revisions are approved and take affect 30 days after the vote, it will be a challenging endeavor for the school district to prepare a budget to hand in a month earlier.

“People would have enjoyed the opportunity to have modest changes,” Dr Reed said. “We view this as not helping us increase the effectiveness of the school system.”