Board of Education passes superintendent's budget

The Board of Education last night voted to approve a schools budget of $69,550,000, which will increase class sizes in the elementary schools, by eliminating 6 elementary school positions. Superintendent Barbara Senges informed the Board that the collapse in the number of classes will be done mostly in grades 3, 4 and 5, and that "No teacher is losing their job." The collapse of 6 classes is fewer than many parents had feared in March, when the Board voted to eliminate 13 elementary school teachers.

Michael Frechette told The Eye that the budget situation was less dire now than it seemed to be in early March, when the Board approved a $70.7M budget. The two major changes from the March budget are a nearly $1M decrease (23%) in the CIGNA health insurance for classified staff and paraprofessionals, and the retirement of 24 teachers instead of the 11 which were planned for in March. In addition, in this budget there are reductions in the tuition charged by the TEMS magnet school, savings in transportation, the cutting of a second PROBE gifted program teacher, and other relatively smaller cost savings.

The board spent about 30 minutes debating an amendment proposed by Ryan Kennedy. Kennedy proposed restoring the 6 cut elementary teachers, pointing out that the initial report of a consultant hired by the Board of Ed said that 97% of the people at their schools outreach meetings had ranked class size as one of the top 3 most important features of schools. To fund these teachers, Kennedy proposed cutting one of the "Middle School Instructional Support

Teacher" (each MIST costs $86,196), and 5-10% cuts in Stipends, Purchased Services, and other services and supplies.

Senges spoke at length about the value of MIST to the schools, saying that a cut in MIST would not be good for the middle schools, "Our middle schools are struggling, ... I would hate to see the MISTs go." The amendment was defeated along party lines, with only the Republicans, Kennedy, Corinne Gill, and Sheila Daniels voting for it.

Board Member Renee Johnson-Thornton expressed her concerns about the reduction in teaching staff and asked the board to consider postponing a decision on the budget until a later meeting, "We need some time to do this right, to find a way to keep our teachers." Board Members Bill Boyd and Chairman Ted Raczka both vigorously objected to this idea. Boyd said, "We can't put this off, in my opinion, any longer." He also questioned whether a "citizen's panel" could possibly come up with a better budget than the superintendent of schools (Dr. Michael Frechette), "To tamper with this is to scoff at the team of experts." Raczka clearly shared Boyd's opinion, saying in exasperation, "We've been looking at this since December."

The budget was passed along party lines, receiving yes votes from Democrats Johnson-Thornton, Raczka, Boyd, Sally Boske and Jay Keiser.

Senges said that the budget's impact on class sizes would be minimal, that the collapsing of classes might mean that instead of 45 students being split into 3 classes of 15 each, they would be put into 2 classes of 22 and 23 each. Dr. Frechette said that he was not sure which schools would see classes combined next year, "There are many considerations, I'm still gathering information and will be speaking with principals in the next two days."

In an exchange with Raczka after the meeting, I expressed the opinion that there had not been much opportunity for public input into the budget process (this budget was not available until minutes before this meeting and the vote on the budget occurred without any public comment period, see earlier Eye Piece). Clearly frustrated, Raczka angrily told me that nobody had any cause to question the opportunity for public input, that compared to other towns, Middletown's Board of Education was much more open. Unfortunately, he stormed to his car before we could continue the conversation.