Things To Consider
To the Editor:
A group of concerned citizens, including Pat Bailey, Marcia Cavanaugh, Nancy Kennedy, Carol Mattegat, Millie Anderson, Barbara...
Why The New Approach?
To the Editor:
We need a new approach to staffing [at the animal shelter]. Why is that? It sounds like the shell game to me and perhaps Iâ...
NHS Girls’ Lacrosse Team Unbeaten In Conference
The Newtown High School girls’ lacrosse team keeps winning. The girls remained perfect ...
DUI Charge
Police said that motorist David Lindblom, 60, of 10 Sunnyview Terrace was driving a 2001 Chrysler Sebring in a commercial parking lot at 5 Queen...
*Session I: July 6-8 & July 11-15/ $225
*Session II: July 18-22/ $150
*Session III: August 15-19/ $150
The Murphy Basketball Camp welcomes Jeremy O’...
Glover Avenue Crosswalk Repainting Approved For Pedestrian Safety
By Andrew Gorosko
A town work crew started repainting the traffic-worn crosswalk markings on G...
Wine Tasting
For ‘PKN
Listener-funded radio station WPKN (89.5 FM) will benefit from a wine tasting that will take place Saturday, May 14.
The publ...
Rock Ridge Country Club Opens With ABCD Tournaments
Rock Ridge Country Club’s season got underway this past weekend with the ABCD tournaments.
On t...
Local School Administration
Is Not Bloated
To the Editor:
The Legislative Council has forced through a $734,000 cut to the Board of Education budget which will ...
Occupation: I’m a retired State of Connecticut teacher. I taught French and Latin, mostly at Bethel High School, and retired seven years ago.
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I am sorry but $88.8 million dollars to educate 4030 kids is way out of line! That's over $22k per kid, used to be $8k per kid, the kids aren't getting any smarter, the administration eats all the cost. Time to cut the budget by 20% and also cut the $225k salary of the superintendent and $193k of the superintendent assistant ! You can get a lot of teachers for $400k wasted for 2 overpaid positions. Common sense should tell you that spending $2.5 million per every week for population less than 30k people is just way too high! Also voting should be done by mail, enough with these nonsensical referendums where barely 16% of voters show up. 51% voters approval should be MANDATED!
Who have you asked that didn't know where to cut? Its easy. Ideally, you would start with section 100 of the budget but the union prevents that. So I say you turn to page 18, put it on your dart board, and start reducing the head count. It's all you can do when the union controls the budget.
The people have spoken, time to sharpen your pencils. If we look at the town budget for guidance the BOE should cut the budget from 4.4% to 2.75% I find the voting results very interesting ... We have approximately 4,030 students in our town, with a published 12:1 ratio which means we have 335 teachers. I would love to know the actual number if someone knows. If we account for their spouses that gets us very close to the number of people who voted yes for the budget and wished it would be higher (729).