To the editor
By:
The proposed budget is a result of a process that needs to be reformed to improve voter confidence in the dollars and the priorities.
On April 6, I participated as a candidate during the Board of Education "Candidates Night" meeting. This annual opportunity to hear from the candidates, as sponsored by the HEF and HEA, went less noticed because no one announced it to the Beacon.
In the debate, Mr. Hudes, one of the three incumbents who supports the budget increases, asked me whether I supported the current school budget. I said that I do not support a budget I do not understand, even though I have studied this process for years.
Although no one asked me why, I thought you’d want to know what is not understood.
Our district hired a professional demographer to study enrollment trends and last year concluded that the student enrollment here would remain basically flat for the foreseeable future. But now we are told that there is a temporary enrollment surge affecting the third grades and this required the hiring of three additional third-grade teachers.
Why make permanent staff additions like this for a specific grade level in the name of reasonable class size, when the problem is temporary? Will we hire three more teachers for the fourth and then fifth-grade as this "bubble" of kids moves through the system?
The hiring of an additional high school remedial math teacher concerns me because it represents the surrender to a chronic math education problem. Are we heading towards additional remedial math teachers and science teachers in the rest of our schools?
Our district’s 5-year strategic plan attempts to anticipate and provide the orderly provisioning of education needs and services that also impact our classrooms. Why then is the replacement of critical classroom items, like textbooks and computers not adequately addressed in each annual budget, thereby eliminating the chronic need for supplemental budget questions for these items?
This pattern of hiring new teachers while hampering teachers in general from doing their job with adequate textbooks, class materials and computers needs a fresh look.
The pattern in which education costs are driven up by un-funded mandates imposed by the state DOE, which then result in higher property tax rates needs to be stopped. These escalating and chronic un-funded programs, forced on the taxpayer are actionable, both politically and in court.
For example, the state of Connecticut filed a lawsuit last week against the Department of Education because of the NCLB program. We can join them in the fight, if indeed NCLB is not funded. Is it really un-funded?
If our school district can find the funds to sustain over $1 million in legal fees, over a 6-year period, in dispute of a contractor over $850,000, can’t we fight over the constitutionality of un-funded mandates in court?
As a parent with two children in this school district, I want my kids to have the best education I can afford for them, just like you. The escalating costs to educate them however, is out of our control and has to be stopped. Let us also stop using the second referendum filled with goodies to get the voters out.
Remember that three out of the past four school budgets were defeated at the polls. The budgets were reduced and the district’s report card showed continuing improvements in both academics and extra curricula activities, anyway.
We even found a way to get a new carpet on the high school football field without raising taxes. Recall that this "turf" was going to cost the taxpayers around $500,000.
Don’t forget to vote with your head on April 19th and commit to increase your knowledge and involvement at school board meetings.
Board Of Education candidate

