By the time the Ansonia Board of Education met Wednesday to finalize cuts to the school district’s programs and staff, six full time teachers in the district had already received pink slips.
“They found out this week,” said Michele Fraher, the co-president of the Ansonia Federation of Teachers, the union that represents all teachers, guidance counselors and social workers in the district.
“It’s unfortunate because it’s always the teachers that get hit,” Fraher said.
Also receiving pink slips this week: eight tutors and eight part-time interventionists.
The district eliminated 24 positions as a result of a budget gap caused by a $2.2 million loss in grants.
However, not all positions resulted in a layoff, after two people took early retirement and a third found a job in another district, Fraher said.
Still, those positions won’t be refilled, and the end result for the students is the same.
“Class sizes are going to be larger,” Fraher said. “It definitely is going to impact what happens in the classroom.”
The city has been reeling since the cuts were announced last month, when the city approved its final budget and the district learned it wouldn’t get the full amount it asked for.
The Board of Education voted 5 – 2 Wednesday to accept the district’s final $27 million budget.
Board member George Boath made the motion, noting “It’s a bitter pill to swallow.”
Watch this WTNH report on the Ansonia school budget. Story continues below.
The budget is about a 2 percent increase over current spending.
However, the district is losing about $2.2 million in grants this year.
The budget increase doesn’t fill in the gap.
The following positions and programs were among the items the district could no longer afford:
- A kindergarten aide at Mead School
- $100,000 from the athletics budget, which will cut junior varsity football from the high school and reduce the junior varsity and freshmen baseball programs.
- A truancy officer at Ansonia High School
- Behavior interventionists at Prendergast School
- A $40,000 cut in technology budget across the district
- A special education Pre‑K teacher
- 8 part-time interventionists, who help give extra services to students in need of extra help
- A special education teacher at the Ansonia Middle School
“It’s very upsetting. It’s disheartening,” Fraher said. “All the gains we’ve made over the past years we feel are definitely going to be undone. And it’s going to hurt our ability to recruit and retain good teachers.”
The meeting Wednesday drew a large media presence, as well as a handful of teachers and parents. No one spoke about the cuts during the public comment session.
However, parent Susan Bosworth spoke to reporters outside of the meeting.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous and every kid in this town is going to suffer,” Bosworth said.
Bosworth said she would have rather seen her taxes go up, than to decimate the school system. She attended Wednesday’s meeting hoping that some last effort to save teaching jobs would come up.
It didn’t.
“I just wanted to see what they were going to do,” Bosworth said. “If there was any last hope.”
The Board of Education members spent time talking about how the $100,000 cut would affect the athletic program, but didn’t go into too much detail with the other cuts.
After the budget was approved, members talked about the possibility of state “alliance district” grants, and how they would use the money if it gets appropriated. The general plan is to fund a new reading program for the lower elementary grades.
But that money isn’t a sure thing, and Assistant Superintendent Anthony Gasper warned that it might come with strings attached, and be available for only a short time, if at all.
“We have not talked about the grant being a way to alleviate the cuts from tonight,” Gasper said.
And the board talked about a small surplus likely to come at the end of this fiscal year: About $100.
Board president John Lawlor asked James Gaskins, the district’s finance director, how the district would go about requesting that money get put into the 2012 – 2013 budget.
“We can use every penny we can get,” Lawlor said.
