A screen shot from Tuesday's Derby Board of Apportionment and Taxation meeting.
DERBY — The Derby Board of Education is asking the city for a 4.8 percent funding increase to run the schools next year. That’s a budget-to-budget increase of $913,805.
School district leaders appeared at a meeting of the Derby Board of Apportionment and Taxation on Tuesday to make their case.
School board chairman Jim Gildea noted three of the last four budget cycles have seen schools receive no funding increases. The district has been relying more and more on state grants, such as the money Derby schools receive for being an “alliance district.”
Alliance district money is not supposed to be used for the school district’s operating budget.
Derby schools receive the alliance district money because the schools underperform and struggle for money. Derby as a whole is poor. Alliance district money is supposed to be used to fund specific programs to improve learning in struggling communities. It’s supposed to be money on top of what Derby allocates to run the schools, not instead of, officials said.
“Three of the last four years we have gotten a zero-percent increase,” Gildea said. “That’s not sustainable. People sit here and they say ‘Gee whizz, you make it work,’ but we’re not making it work. We don’t make it work by a long shot. We take money from grants that are designed to help our at-risk students.“
Derby Public Schools Superintendent Matthew Conway said the alliance district grant is not meant to go on forever. It will eventually end, which is bad news if the city keeps flat-funding education.
School district officials on Tuesday displayed data showing a steep increase in the use of grant funds.
In the 2012 – 2013 budget, 229 positions were funded through the district’s operating budget. Twenty-six positions were paid for by grants.
In the 2021 – 2022 budget, 206 positions were funded from the operating budget, while 96 positions were paid for by grants.
“We’re just running out of things to move and items to cut,” Conway said.
The school district is proposing a 2022 – 2023 budget totaling $19,990,511, an increase of $913,805 over the budget currently in place.
The biggest drivers of the budget are contractual obligations: things such as previously approved union contracts with teachers and administrators. Spending on salaries and benefits is increasing by $525,408 in the proposed budget.
Costs connected to special education are also increasing in the proposed budget.
If a student’s challenges or special needs are such that he or she cannot be educated within Derby Public Schools, that child goes to school elsewhere (perhaps at a specialized school), and Derby pays tuition to the other school, as required by federal law.
Derby’s school budget calls it “special education tuition,” and it’s increasing in the proposed budget by $77,067 (or 3.42 percent). Conway noted while it’s still an increase, it’s not like the 9 or 10 percent yearly increases from a few years back. That’s because school officials have been able to create programs within the school districts’ walls to educate kids with more needs. Educating special education students locally is cheaper than sending kids out of the district.
Transportation for special education students who attend school outside the Derby system is increasing by $56,053 (or 10.5 percent) in the proposed budget.
Transportation for all other students is going up by 3.5 percent (or $28,000).
The cost for water, electricity, and natural gas is going up by 7.5 percent (or $49,770).
Fuel costs are up 7.5 percent ($4,738).
Inflation is also hitting the budget. School officials said it’s becoming increasingly difficult to get contractors to take repair jobs in Derby schools — and the costs are skyrocketing. The budget seeks a 15 percent increase for repairs, or $45,566.
During the public comment portion of Tuesday’s meeting, resident Tom Lionetti said statements made by Gildea earlier in the meeting were spot on.
“He’s 100 percent right. It’s about time the Board of Ed gets the funds they need to run that school district properly,” Lionetti said.
John Saccu, the city’s youth services director and a Derby resident, deals with at-risk kids every day. He said Derby’s students and families need support, especially from what he sees first-hand.
“Our educators have a heavy lift,” Saccu said.
In Derby, the Derby Board of Apportionment and Taxation has the final say on annual budgets and the mill rate. Its members have been reviewing requests from departments.
Mayor Rich Dziekan’s budget proposes a 0.3 percent increase ($60,583) increase for education.
Conway suggested the city consider using money it receives from the state’s “PILOT” program to fund Derby schools. “PILOT” is payment in lieu of local taxes. It’s money from the state to compensate cities that have non-taxable properties, such as Griffin Hospital.
Conway said last year Derby received a big bump (he said about $700,000) in “PILOT” money because the state said towns that have alliance school districts should get more “PILOT” money.
“I might be biased, but if we get it because we are an alliance district, doesn’t it make sense to spend it on schools?” Conway asked.
Conway suggested the $913,805 increase could be funded by using a possible $299,000 increase in alliance district funding from the state (but not yet approved), along with $299,000 from a non-lapsing fund the city and the school district created a few years back. The fund is unused education dollars the district gives back to the city.
Those two sources add up to $598,000. The remaining $315,805 toward the school’s budget $913,805 request could be covered through the extra PILOT funding from the state, Conway suggested.
However, Derby City/Town Clerk Marc Garofalo said the city’s tax board last year opted not to give the extra PILOT funding to the schools. That money was spent elsewhere in the Derby budget. That means giving the schools PILOT money now would deplete some other part of the Derby budget.
In addition, Garofalo said the state had been underfunding its PILOT obligations for years, and took issue with the assertion that the extra money was meant to go to schools.
Derby must adopt a budget by the end of April.
