LETTER: Superintendent's generosity with our tax dollars

Last Updated on Tuesday, 14 February 2012 22:32 Friday, 17 February 2012 01:00

To the Editor:

As a member of the Bethany Board of Education, let me begin by stating that the following expresses my own personal beliefs and feelings as a taxpayer, and in no way are those of the Board of Education.

At the last special meeting of the Bethany Board of Education, our superintendent brought up an idea on how to increase revenue. His plan was to increase “open choice” from the current four to 15 students. The increase in the number of students will bring in $90,000 to our school in grants (average of $6,000 per student). What is open choice? According to the state Department of Education website, open choice is as follows:

“The Open Choice program allows urban students to attend public schools in nearby suburban towns. It allows suburban and rural students to attend public schools in a nearby urban center. Enrollments are offered by school districts on a space-available basis in grades K-12. Lotteries are used to place students when there are more applications than spaces available. The program includes Hartford, Bridgeport and New Haven and their surrounding districts.”

Using basic math, we presently have 488 students in the Bethany Community School. The current year’s budget for the school is $6,276,791. That averages to $12,800 per student. The tuition grant for open choice is $6,000 per student. If it costs $6000 to educate each student, shouldn’t our school budget be $2,928,000 (488 x $6,000)?

If it’s true that it only costs $6,000 to educate each child, where is the other $3,348,791 going? If the true cost is really $12,800, are we such a wealthy town that we can afford to give away $6,800 per child? If the true cost is $12,800, for educating our children and running the school, these additional 15 students will cost the school an extra $102,000 of lost revenue, verses $90,000 in gained revenue at the Superintendent tells us.

.The truth is that the Board of Education is using the program to add $90,000 to their budget. This will cause taxpayers three problems. The first is if we as a town accept this in the additional tax burden to the residents of the town. The second is that accepting the money, we will never be able to reduce the open seats because the Board of Education will never give up this revenue stream. Finally, this will increase the dwindling student population, and either keep our classes bigger or listen to why we need to build a new addition to the school.

In these difficult economic times, I feel the taxpayers of Bethany deserve to know how generous the superintendent and the Board of Education are with their school. The goodness of the “open choice” seats has now been lost when we start trading money for inner city children.

I ask that the taxpayers come to the next Board of Education or Finance meeting, or write a letter expressing your feelings on this issue. The Boards needs to be accountable for how they are spending your money.