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DERBY – Members of the school board are on track to adopt a budget for the 2025 – 2026 fiscal year on Feb. 20.
The budget is then sent to Derby City Hall, where Mayor Joseph DiMartino and the city’s elected board of apportionment and taxation will review the budget and decide how much money to give.
The Derby budget is usually finalized in the spring.
This is a tough budget year for school districts in Connecticut. The state’s two-year budget is currently being created. Local schools don’t know how much state aid is on the way. Furthermore, federal aid is also an open question with President Donald Trump in power. Click here, too.
Derby schools receive about $2 million from federal funding.
The school board was supposed to have a budget into Derby City Hall in January, but opted to wait a little longer because of the uncertainty.
The members of the school board discussed their draft budget at a meeting Jan. 23 with Superintendent Matthew Conway and business manager Robert Trainor.
The current school budget approved by the city last spring totals $20,281,949.
The proposed budget for next year totals $21,425,124.
That is a 5.6 percent budget-to-budget increase.
However, school officials said the increase is smaller if you subtract $688,357 in excess cost grant funding from the State of Connecticut.
That brings the proposed budget for next year to $20,736,749, or a 2.19 percent ($454,800) increase.
Talk of excess cost grant funding – or ECS for short – dominated three recent school board meetings.
In Connecticut, the governor and the legislature create a new budget every two years. A new state budget will be unveiled by Gov. Ned Lamont in February, and the legislature will work until June or so to approve a budget.
The pot of money the state allocated for ECS funding in its current budget has not kept up with demand. So, the $688,357 the school board is budgeting is actually less than what they received this year.
The hope is that the state will give more money, but it’s too early to tell. Conway said Derby’s delegation in Hartford is well aware of the issue and have called it a no. 1 priority.
“We will just have to wait and see where the legislature falls with that,” Conway said.
Click this link to check Derby school board meeting minutes and agendas.