Derby parents, administrators and several school board members Tuesday vowed to “take the fight to City Hall” to get adequate funding for the school district next year.
“We shouldn’t be in the position of apologizing for what it costs to run the school district,” school board member Kimberly Kreiger said.
The words came as the school board unanimously approved a $19 million spending plan, which carries a $1.28 million increase over the current budget.
That is a 7.22 percent increase from the current budget — and slightly more than Superintendent Stephen Tracy had initially recommended to the school board in early February.
Tracy recommended cutting the district’s full-day kindergarten program to half-day as a cost-cutting measure.
However, after some 17 people spoke against the cut Tuesday, the school board voted to put full-day kindergarten back into the budget at a cost of $150,000.
The school board also restored several sports programs to the tune of $39,683.
However, the budget still includes five layoffs, down from the nine initially proposed.
Parents who spoke at Tuesday’s school board meeting explored common themes — namely that Derby schools are already in bad shape and that cutting programs and teachers won’t help the situation.
“I really don’t think we are doing the best we can,” said Derby resident Beth Colette, after pointing out the school district has no librarians and that Advanced Placement classes at the high school are combined with honors classes.
Derby resident Christopher Bowen called the school district “horribly underfunded.”
“I’m asking you to make that fight and stop making cuts,” Bowen told the school board.
It was a statement school board member George Kurtyka picked up on.
He urged the many parents in attendance to attend the upcoming meetings of the Derby Board of Apportionment and Taxation (the tax board), the group of elected officials who will decide how much money to allocate to the school district.
Last year they granted the school district a 2.2 percent budget increase.
“We do need to bring the fight to City Hall,” said Kurtyka, a former tax board member.
Up next for the Derby school board — a trip to the tax board, where Tracy is scheduled to review the budget request March 29 in Derby City Hall.
Sharpeye. Were you there? Were you at the BOE meeting? Or are you just speaking for the sake of speaking?
If you were there, you would have seen the presentation stating that Derby’s education budget is just above 50% of Derby’s spending. As mentioned by another commenter, if you take out in-kind contributions, it’s only about 48%, though I don’t know how those affect the other towns in the Valley. Do you know how low that puts us? It puts us about six percentage points below Ansonia (55.9%), eight below Seymour, and a whopping 65% below Oxford. As I mentioned elsewhere, Oxford is the fastest growing community in Seymour. I am certain that’s not a coincidence. Oh, and by the way, these numbers are all with a new middle school that voters were A-OK with a few years ago.
Frankly, I’m in favour of even more than a 7.22% increase, and I say that as a Derby taxpayer. We’re horrifically underfunded, as I stated. But that’s a band-aid on an artery wound. Where is the other 49.8% of Derby’s spending going? The downtown redevelopment that’s gone absolutely nowhere? Where’s the damned money going, Sharpeye? And why are we continually underfunding our kids, then claiming poverty?
Until someone can satisfactorally answer these questions, there is no reason why we should approve a budget that already cuts more jobs than it is.