Seymour’s Board of Education is trying hard to get out as much information as possible about its proposed $30.9 million budget for 2012 – 2013.
So much so that Board of Education Chairman Yashu Putorti had to ask parents Monday night if he was boring them with detail.
“Am I boring you to death?” Putorti asked, offering to do a dance to help keep the presentation entertaining.
Putorti spent more than an hour Monday explaining line items in the proposal, listing contracts the Board of Education has, and offering comparisons between Seymour and other school districts in the areas of salaries, staffing levels and per pupil spending.
About 35 people — including Board of Education members and school staff — attended the event at Seymour Middle School.
“All of this stuff is online,” Putorti said several times throughout the presentation. “If you want to look at it, you can get it.”
Click this link to visit the website, where you can download PDF versions of the presentations.
Strategy
Transparency and information overload have been the Board of Education’s strategy this year, as it tries to bounce back after several years of small or no budget increases.
“We’ve been running on a shoe-string budget as best we can,” Putorti said.
Voters have rejected initial budget proposals that carried any kind of increase over the past several years. In 2012 it took four tries to get the school budget passed.
Last year, it took three tries to pass a budget, which held a $677,000 increase.
So the Board of Education has prepared an extensive information package about its spending, its activities and anything else they could think of.
The first of three documents can be found posted below. To download the rest, click here.
Article continues after document.
BOF MEETING Presentation 1 – 9 030712
Budget Vote
Board members hope the effort pays off on referendum day May 3, when voters decide whether to approve or reject school and town budget proposals.
The Seymour Board of Finance was scheduled to discuss the budget proposal at a special meeting Monday night.
The latest budget figures available before that meeting were:
Town Budget: $16,351,381, a 4.45 percent increase over the current budget of $15,654,734
School Budget: $30,994,803, a 4.03 percent increase over the current budget of $29,794,803
The budget proposal also includes $175,000 for contingency costs, $50,000 for a senior citizen tax freeze and $100,000 for the capital reserve fund — a newly budgeted item.
The total proposed increase is 4.12 percent.
Tax bills will vary next year, because of a revaluation the town went through. Most tax bills will increase under the proposal, although some will decrease. Click here to read more details about how the revaluation will affect tax bills in Seymour.
Seymour School Budget Highlights
While Putorti’s presentation was filled with data, here are some highlights from the presentation. The rest can be found in his budget documents, available here, and posted at the end of this article.
- School consolidation: Seymour is consolidating two elementary schools, Chatfield and LoPresti, and expects to save about $353,000 as a result.
- New Initiatives: With the savings from the school consolidation, the district hopes to implement about $345,000 worth of new initiatives, including two new fine arts teachers at the high school, a STEM teacher at the middle school and state-mandated behaviorist. See more details in the document below. Article continues after document.
Seymour Schools Budget Request
- Hidden Savings: The regular transportation line item is increasing by about $20,000, Putorti said. But what is not obvious by that line item is the $100,000 cost the district avoided by re-scheduling all the bus routes. Because LoPresti has about 80 walkers who will need to take a bus to the new elementary school next year, the district faced the possibility of needed two new school buses next year, Putorti said. Because of the new bus routes, the district will have the same number of buses next year, saving about $100,000 in potential costs.
