The school board voted 6 – 2 Tuesday to adopt Superintendent Stephen Tracy’s recommended budget for 2010 – 2011.
The spending plan totals $18,584,779 — about 7 percent, or $1.2 million, larger than the current budget.
The budget’s next stop will be in front of the city’s Board of Apportionment and Taxation.
No members of the public attended the meeting except for Anita Dugatto, who serves on the city’s Board of Apportionment and Taxation.
Board members Andrew Mancini and school board chairman Kenneth Marcucio, Sr. voted against passing the budget along in its current state.
Marcucio urged the board to trim the request. He questioned the money being allocated for to maintain the district’s buildings and grounds, particularly some projected overtime costs.
“Some of these things are just too high,” Marcucio said. “We are going to have to come back here and cut these things. We are not going to get seven percent from the city,” he said.
On Monday, at Marcucio’s suggestion, the school boarded added $64,483 to the budget to restore athletic programs at the middle school and the high school that were cut last year.
Debate
In lobbying for a smaller request, Marcucio said other school districts are requesting smaller increases in their budgets.
Schools Superintendent Stephen Tracy noted that Derby has traditionally spent less per pupil than other school districts. The district is now playing “catch up,” Tracy said, making the budget difficult to trim.
“We’ve got problems to solve,” the superintendent said.
Part of the new spending in the budget includes $90,000 to hire a director of curriculum.
Mancini asked if the district could do without the new position.
Tracy said the position is needed so that someone can train teachers and come up with teaching strategies.
Over the summer, parents of students at the Irving School were given the option of transferring their children to the Bradley School because Irving did not make yearly adequate progress as defined by federal No Child Left Behind legislation.
Part of the curriculum director’s job would be to focus on student achievement — and how it relates to No Child Left Behind.
Going without the position is an option, Tracy said, but “we may not have the data we want … we may not have the achievement we want.”
“It’s a little bit like a roof that’s been up there too long. It hasn’t caved in yet …,” Tracy said.
Marcucio was hoping the school board would trim the increase by about $174,000.
That would have brought the budget-to-budget increase to six percent.
However, the majority of his colleagues wanted to go with what they had and make their case to the Derby tax board.
“I think we should just try it and see what happens,” school board member Stephanie D’Onofrio said.
School board member Kimberly Kreiger said any new spending in the budget can be justified.
“It’s a fairly lean budget as it is,” she said.
Derby Middle School
While spending is increasing 7 percent, school officials repeatedly pointed out that in this budget, residents are paying for a full year of operation at the new middle school, which opened on Nutmeg Avenue across from the high school Jan. 4.
Last year, costs related to the middle school were listed in a separate budget document.
Tracy said that without the middle school, spending in the new budget would be increasing by 5.4 percent.
The Increase
At budget workshops in January and February, Tracy broke the $1.2 million increase into the following basic parts:
1. Health benefits: Increasing by $380,000
2. Costs associated with the new middle school: $265,000
3. State placements (young people sentenced to juvenile jails, other court-mandated programs): $120,000
4. Special education tuition: $120,000
5. Contractual salary increases: $90,000
6. Curriculum director: $90,000
7. Alternative high school program: $50,000
8. Transportation: $13,000
9. Strategic Planning: $10,000
10. Accreditation expenses: $10,000
When the Derby tax board will review the school budget was not immediately known Tuesday. At a meeting last Wednesday, the tax board set a tentative schedule for their review of city allocations. Click here to read it.
Check the Electronic Valley’s Derby section for weekly meeting listings.
