Public Tells Common Council to Restore $2.4 million to Board of Education Budget

Last night's Common Council Public Hearing on the Budget was a standing-room-only affair, with members of the public overwhelmingly telling Council members to "see the whole child" and to restore the $2.4 million in budget cuts proposed by Mayor Giuliano's budget.

Parents, students, teachers, administrators, and even non-Middletown residents who work in Middletown spoke for almost three hours. Some spoke specifically on behalf of individual programs, such as middle-school sports or the Youth Program, while others championed the results from this past year's CMTs scores as evidence the district has momentum in the right direction: "To cut programs and staff now, after all our hard work and the progress we've made, that would just destroy our ability to move forward," one teacher commented.

One of the MHS biology teachers spoke about how the past two years of "zero budget increases" for the school district have affected his ability to buy books for his program: "We used to buy new books every five years, but now I've had to mooch funds from other places just to cover the consolidation we did from three levels of classes to two levels. I had two different books, one published in 1999 and the other in 2001: one wasn't available anymore at all and so I was stuck with how to pay for the right book for everyone. In my AP course, I have to choose between de-certifying the course because I don't have the right book or spending funds I don't have to get new books....what am I supposed to choose?"

A small portion of the people who spoke expressed distrust or disapproval of the way the Board of Education or the Superintendent are seen to handle the budget process. Some did specifically accuse the Superintendent of fraud or wasteful spending, but others encouraged the city to look for energy savings by turning off lights or using rainwater collection as a means to trim the budget.

At the end of the meeting, Councilman Thomas Serra, the Majority Leader, announced that the Majority would caucus on the budget on May 5, 6, and 9, and then he would call the Minority Leader, Phil Pessina, on May 10 to share the budget proposal. The anticipated budget adoption date is May 12. Serra listed the following as his priorities:

• No increase in taxes
• Proper city services provided
• Looking for money to move around from one place to another in the budget
• Trimming any excess out of the budget
• Potentially approaching the State of CT for more revenue

Serra went on to say, "You have to understand that we give a bulk sum of money to the Board of Education, and then they are responsible for what happens to it." Minority Leader Phil Pessina said the Minority would also caucus and look for ways to move money around in the budget: "I'm putting out the challenge to the Superintendent and I'm asking for an audit to find opportunities to save in a responsible manner."

Author's Note:

I spoke at the public hearing and urged the Common Council to think about the school budget process as something more than just saving individual teaching jobs. Consider this example: pretend we had to cut the Police budget, but we saved all the police jobs. There wasn't enough money to buy cruisers or full utility belts, but we could afford red wagons and squirt guns. How safe would you feel? How well could the police do their job to protect the citizens of Middletown?

In the same way, at some point, just saving teaching jobs without providing the underlying program structure becomes an exercise in complete frustration for everyone involved. It might be great that we have smaller class sizes, but if there's no glue sticks, workbooks or adequate textbooks, we still have a serious problem.

The other issue to consider is that we are spending considerable time and money to help high school kids "catch-up" to being in high school. If our resources were concentrated at the elementary level, and if we made sure kids had the basics (like being able to read at grade level) they needed to succeed in junior high and high school, we wouldn't have to work so hard to meet CMT standards at higher levels.

Finally, we can not seriously expect to maintain a zero-increase education budget if we also expect teachers to be able to get raises, and if we know that health care costs increase, and if we demand small class sizes. The ONLY way to achieve this is to cut some teaching positions so that others can get raises (but class sizes go up), or cut programs and materials (quality of the student experience decreases). We just can't have it both ways at the same time under the present formula for funding education. Perhaps one day we could think of another way to construct the system, but that doesn't help us right at this moment with the decisions we face.

The complete BOE budget presentation is available here. If you have questions about where the money is spent, browse through the budget book and see for yourself. In summary, the proposed $71,952,813 budget breaks down like this:

• Salaries: 58.34% ($41,974,170)
• Employee Benefits: 16.98% ($12,214,193)
• Purchased Services: 12.12% ($8,719,200)
• Supplies: 5.68% (4,089,479)
• Property: 1.75% (1,259,177)
• Dues and Fees: 0.08% ($59,518)
• Capital: 0.27% ($195,000)
• Tuition: 4.75% ($3,442,076)