Shelton school administrators and Board of Education members asked the Board of Aldermen at a hearing on the 2013 – 2014 budget Wednesday to close what they said is an $841,000 funding shortfall in their budget.
Board of Education Chairman Mark Holden said the farther the final budget leaves the public schools from closing the $841,000 gap, the greater the chance for staff layoffs or program cuts in the next school year.
Holden, formerly the chairman of the Board of Apportionment and Taxation, even suggested a way the Aldermen could come up with $213,978 — just raise the projected tax collection rate from the 98.7 percent in Mayor Mark Lauretti’s budget recommendation to 98.9 percent, the rate in the current year’s budget, he said.
Aldermen are not due to vote on the budget until May 30, during a special meeting at 7:30 p.m. in City Hall.
In addition, a budget workshop is scheduled for May 21 at 7:30 p.m.
Numbers
The Aldermen are considering a municipal budget of $115,492,006, which was passed to them from the Board of Apportionment and Taxation last month with the same bottom line proposed by Mayor Mark Lauretti in March.
The budget, if passed as it is, would result in a very slight tax rate decrease from 22.4 to 22.3 mills.
So, if Aldermen pass the budget as it stands, a person who owns a house assessed at $230,000 would go from paying $5,152 in property taxes to $5,129, a decrease of $23.
The proposed budget would spend $50,092,006 for city departments and $65,400,000 for the Board of Education.
Comments
“Good work,” said Ron Pavluvcik of Aspetuck Village, the only speaker at Wednesday’s public hearing who did not advocate raising the allocation for the schools.
Pavluvcik said that by lowering the mill rate, the Aldermen would make Shelton more attractive for development than its neighboring communities.
But Holden and other school officials warned that failing to close the school district’s $841,000 budget gap would have consequences.
Though Lauretti’s school funding proposal was $1.4 million lower than the school board had initially requested, some costs were reduced with the planned conversion to propane-powered school buses, though a shortfall remains.
Of the $841,000 figure Holden used Wednesday, he said $440,000 is for program improvements, and the rest is to meet contractual obligations, including a salary increase in a teachers contract that was settled by binding arbitration.
Schools Superintendent Freeman Burr said part of those improvements would be for the guidance counselors at Shelton Intermediate School and Shelton High School.
He said lots of students have emotional and mental problems that must be addressed, noting that Adam Lanza, who committed the mass murder in December at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, was an example of an individual who did not receive intervention services while in school.
Burr said other improvements would be for the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) curriculum, and to increase the opportunities for students to spend time in their school libraries in grades 1 through 4.
Burr said the STEM curriculum and the research skills children learn from the school library media specialists would help prepare Shelton students for the best jobs in the 21st century.
Schools Finance Director Allan Cameron detailed the many ways the Shelton public schools have saved money over the years.
For instance, he said the school system has gone from 416 teachers and 25 administrators in 2009 to 390 teachers and 23 administrators this year.
Cameron also noted that the new Connecticut Core Curriculum is a costly state mandate that the district must implement this year.
“We’re the only ones who have done more with less,” said Board of Education member Arlene Liscinsky.
None of the city departments have had to lay off employees or saved as substantial amounts of money as the school system has, she said.
Debbie Callahan, an elementary school reading tutor and the parent of a child with learning disabilities, also urged support for increasing the school budget.
She said the budget shortfall could result in layoffs that could hurt instruction of special education students.
Callahan said her son was reading two grades below his grade level until receiving help from tutors and reading specialists. Now he is on the honor roll.
