SEYMOUR — The Seymour Board of Education met on June 20 meeting to talk about reducing its 2023 – 2024 budget request by $500,696 after it took three times to get a bottom line approved by voters.
The school budget going into the first referendum on May 4 had a bottom line of $38,659,535. Voters rejected that budget, and rejected a second school budget with a smaller bottom line.
The school budget was approved at a referendum on June 1. It totaled $38,158,839.
So the difference between the first budget sent to the public and the one that was eventually approved was $500,696 – and the school board met to tweak its budget given that difference.
Superintendent of Schools Susan Compton has proposed the following reductions, which the school board will likely vote on its next meeting in July:
* $125,000 in employee benefits
* $100,000 in custodial overtime
* $34,000 in technology
* $78,000 to not replace a social studies teacher at Seymour Middle School
* $75,000 in non-instructional equipment
* $40,000 in electricity costs
* $26,696 in bus fuel
* $22,000 to not replace a part-time secretary at Seymour High School
Compton said the 2023 – 2024 is “bare bones,” but will “not affect the education of our students, which are our most valuable commodity.”
In Seymour, the school board votes to adopt a budget, but that budget is then sent to the Seymour Board of Finance, who can change the school budget’s bottom line. The board of finance then sends the spending plan to voters.
The school board initially approved a budget in January that carried at 7.5 percent, budget-to-budget increase (meaning the 2022 – 2023 budget to the 2023 – 2024 budget). Then school officials said they anticipated nearly $1 million in savings from health insurance costs. That set the budget-to-budget increase to about 5 percent.
The town’s finance board trimmed the increase to 3.8 percent — which voters rejected in May.
Voters eventually approved a 2.5 percent budget-to-budget increase.
