During his budget address last week, Shelton Mayor Mark Lauretti said the city’s school board “plays Santa Claus” with taxpayer money. The school board’s chaiman, Mark Holden, sent the following response.
The only explanation I have for Mayor Lauretti’s assertion that the Shelton Board of Education thinks we’re Santa Claus is we are ranked in the top 37 percent of school districts in the state in student achievement and 90 percent of the districts spend more than we do on a per pupil basis.
Having a budget in the bottom 10 percent and outperforming most of the districts does sound like something Santa might be able to do.
We don’t have magic — but we do have great employees, and our board does care about delivering the best education we can with the hard-earned tax dollars we’re entrusted with.
The Mayor’s budget proposal is $1 million less than we need to maintain our current programs. It fails to cover our contractual obligations for staff, buses and utilities.
The claim that we have 900 students less than in 2006 sounds like a great reason to cut the budget, however it works out to less than one child per classroom per year. The only way a savings could occur would be if a class full of same grade students from one school left the system.
The only programs I’m sure won’t be affected are the Special Ed programs as the state gives us no choice but to fund them fully.
We have strong justification for our full budget request, and in a few weeks we’ll be having a public information night to explain what the items are, and why they’re important. We’ll be happy to answer questions.
