Feb 29, 2008
Wilton financiers question schools on $68-million request
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Wilton’s financiers scrutinized the schools’ proposed budget, digging into the numbers and asking school board members to justify certain increases.
The Board of Education presented its budget — a 6.29% increase to $68.66 million — to the Board of Finance Tuesday night.
“That is the budget that this board adopted on Feb. 7,” school board chair Karen Birck said, adding it is the school board’s job to “ensure taxpayers receive value for their tax dollars.” The district needs to do what it must to maintain the quality of Wilton’s school system, she said.
Before the budget was presented by Dr. Gary Richards, superintendent of schools, to the Board of Education, nearly $512,000 had already been cut out, Ms. Birck said.
Dr. Richards had originally proposed a 6.65% increase to $68.9 million, but cut approximately $230,000 out following requests from members of the school board during budget workshops in December and January. The cuts primarily came from lower than anticipated fuel costs and the postponement of the relocation of the nursing station in the high school.
“I had been hoping they’d be more along the lines of operational savings ... instead of cutting things that get put in next year,” Board of Finance member Andrew Pforzheimer said following the school board’s presentation.
School board member Richard Dubow said the district has been working hard on become energy efficient, which is “going to yield significant savings over time.”
While Board of Finance chair Robert Kelso commended the school board for its hard work drafting the budget and also proposing the lowest increase in eight years, he cautioned the board about future budget increases.
Mr. Kelso said he sees a scenario where Wilton’s grand list is not growing, the state is cutting back on grants and the economy is uncertain.
As the grand list stops growing, a 6% school budget increase will result in a 6% increase in the mill rate, he said.
“I don’t know what you do with that, but that’s the future I see,” he said.
Technology
“We need to educate our children to work in the world that they’re going to go out into,” Ms. Birck said of the budget increase for technology.
The district wishes to hire an additional full-time computer technician.
“It’s better to bring this person in-house” than contract the services, she said. It would cost the district $46 an hour for an in-house technician compared to $100 an hour for a contracted one, she said.
The technician would have a “better understanding of system software” and a “better understand of district priorities,” she said, adding there would be no wait time to get something fixed.
Dr. Richards said currently the district’s “break-to-fix time averages 11 days.”
The proposed technician was requested in the last two budgets, but Dr. Richards cut it out before it reached the school board, Ms. Birck said.
The district also requested 15 new SMART boards and 37 new LCD projectors.
“I think there’s a tendency to equate better technology with better learning,” Mr. Pforzheimer said.
James Dey, technology coordinator for the district, said these technologies help reach kids who might otherwise not just get it.
“We’re seeing that kids are a lot more communicative,” he said, adding the widespread use of services such as instant messaging “really has rolled into their education.”
Mr. Dey said the district doesn’t want to be on “the bleeding edge” by being the first to try new technologies.
“We do do our research,” he said.
Board of Finance member Warren Serenbetz asked if it was going to be the norm for the district to request larger quantities of these technologies each year.
“A lot of teachers came back and said we really need to have this,” Mr. Dey said of teachers who piloted the use of the technology. “They’re finding that it’s working very well.”
Dr. Richards said he didn’t foresee one SMART board in every classroom in the future.
Financier Jim Meinhold asked if the district calculated the year-to-year expense of maintaining these technologies.
“I don’t know the life of a SMART board,” Mr. Dey said, adding he’d guess four or five years. “So far, SMART technology has performed as advertised,” he said. “It’s a new technology” that is a “national phenomenon.”
Mr. Kelso asked if the increase in technology will result in a decrease in staffing in the future.
“I think there’s been an overselling of the notion that technology was going to enable people to reduce staffing,” Dr. Richards said.
Staffing
Staff salaries and benefits for staff and transportation services represent $53.8 million, or 78.4%, of the budget.
The district is asking for an increase of 3.02 full-time equivalent staff, with 0.3 of that being covered by a state grant.
“We look at enrollment projections, program needs and IEPs and we roll all of that together and that’s how we determine” staffing needs, Ms. Birck said.
In order to maintain its current 15.25:1 student to faculty ratio, the high school would need an increase of 2.8 full-time equivalent staff, Ms. Birck said, but only 1.16 was requested.
“We’ve allowed the student to faculty ratio to drift up a bit,” she said.
Mr. Pforzheimer asked why the clerical salaries were increasing again.
Ken Post, the district’s director of financial planning and operations, said those were the result of adding an extra day each week to the extended school year service for special education.
Other
The school board also discussed increases in facility and special education expenditures.
“We’re making an honest effort to make regular maintenance so we don’t have an emergency,” Ms. Birck said of installing new roofs at the schools.
After implementing security measures at the high school in recent years, the district has upgrades planned for other schools. This year, the school board hopes to add a security kiosk in Middlebrook’s main lobby, similar to that at the high school.
Mr. Serenbetz said the special education budget is an area that continues to grow and its growth is likely to continue in future budgets.
“This is probably one of the areas we have the least flexibility in,” Ms. Birck said of special education.
© Copyright 2008 by Hersam Acorn Newspapers
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