A Year In The Newtown School District
By Eliza Hallabeck
The year of 2008 saw accomplished students graduate from Newtown High School, foreign exchange students...
Warren Buffet, the Oracle of Omaha and one of the smartest investors ever, once mused, “You don’t know who’s swimming naked ...
Police Focused On Better Traffic Control In 2008
By Andrew Gorosko
During 2008, town police focused their energies on the problems posed by traffic, as it affe...
New Programs                                                                     For 2009!...
Burt Chernow Galleries Closed Weekends Through January 25
BRIDGEPORT – The Housatonic Museum of Art’s Burt Chernow Galleries, which are ...
Noted Deaths 2008
As with every year, 2008 saw the passing of several notable figures in Newtown.
Louis D. Marchese, 93, Newtown’s first police chi...
Swamp Road
Police report a motor vehicle accident that occurred during snowy, slippery conditions about 12:30 pm December 19 near 39 Swamp Road.
Motorist D...
Corrections
Readers should note that Susan Belanger, who was featured in last week’s Bee in a story called “Peer Group Counseling Offers...
The Little Stories Of Human Interest That Make Newtown Nicer
By Nancy K. Crevier
The Bee featured many stories with a local and national interest slant duri...
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).