MONROE, CT — As the school district faces a list of difficult spending cuts, Board of Education Chairman David Ferris urges parents to participate in a public hearing on the $107,069,131 town budget proposal, to be held by the Board of Finance this Thursday at Monroe Town Hall at 6 p.m.
Citing a need to pass a budget that works for everybody in a state-mandated revaluation year marked by sharp increases in home property values, First Selectman Terry Rooney reduced the Board of Education’s requested increase by $1.85 million.
During Monday night’s Board of Education meeting, Superintendent Joseph Kobza went over a list of possible reductions and savings to meet that number.
“If you say, ‘hey do you think this is a good idea?'” Kobza said of the cuts, “no, I don’t think a lot of this stuff is a good idea, but we have a $1.85 million reduction that we have to address.”
Ferris said, “I know things are very, very tight and the first selectman communicated with me a lot about the budget and the reasons for his reduction — and I understand those very clearly. But it’s going to hurt. It’s gonna hurt us.”
Ferris noted that the Board of Finance’s budget workshops are the school board’s only chance of having funds restored in the $73,917,629 proposal for the 2025-26 education budget, which is $2,453,370 or 3.43 percent higher than the current $71,464,259 spending plan. The board asked for a 6.02 percent increase.
“If they don’t put it back in, we’re going to have some very difficult decisions to make as a district,” Ferris said. “We can make ’em, but we certainly want the public’s support.”
Thursday’s hearing can also be attended remotely on Zoom at this link or residents can call in at 1-929-205-6099, meeting ID: 886 4183 4311, passcode: 176933.
“I’m hoping that we can get a lot of people to email or come to that meeting to politely ask the Board of Finance to please try to figure out a way to get our money back in the budget,” Ferris said.
Educators also encourage parents to attend the Board of Finance workshop on Wednesday, March 26, at 6 p.m. at Town Hall. Finance board members will hear specifics about the Board of Education budget that night.
Proposed reductions
On Monday, Kobza showed several slides to the Board of Education on his administration’s proposals to reduce its budget request by $1.85 million if it is necessary.
Kobza said he worked with school principals with the shared goal of making the hard decisions with the least impact on children and with an eye toward maintaining class sizes.
The first slide showed a list totaling $439,581.
“The first thing I put on here are the proposed new positions,” Kobza said. “The only thing that is not in here that we all thought was important to keep is the 0.4 music teacher, because that was something requested at all three levels to create equity among the elementary schools with what they offer at each school, flexibility for the middle school schedule, and it gave the high school the ability to change their schedule without losing that person.”
New positions to be eliminated include an assistant principal at Stepney Elementary School ($138,586), a math/science specialist ($82,629), a multilingual learners teacher ($82,629), a 0.5 school psychologist ($54,775), a 0.5 inventory specialist ($31,309), and a 0.5 cybersecurity specialist ($49,653).
The next slide showed reductions totaling $486,458.
“This first one is what’s most important to me,” Kobza said of $197,300 for a seventh grade world language teacher.
“I think we’d be the only DRG B school without a world language program, but when we looked at everything else, it’s not a state requirement,” Kobza said.
This means children would start taking world language in eighth grade. Due to the change, Kobza said many seventh grade students would go to a study hall instead of a world language class.
“It’s not a good decision,” Kobza said of the reduction. “It’s not one I fully embrace, but it’s where we are.”
The other proposals include reducing one first grade section at Monroe Elementary School ($82,629), a 1.0 pre-K teacher ($82,629), a Masuk High School para-educator position which the district was unable to fill this year ($23,300), eliminating a Masuk literary lab for $25,000, a $15,000 summer reading program, and a number of stipends totaling $60,600.
Facilities, maintenance
Other potential reductions the superintendent discussed were $70,000 from emergency repairs, which he said could be covered by a facilities special revenue account if needed, a $20,000 reduction in supplies for summer work, and cutting summer help in half for $30,000 in savings.
Kobza said this would affect summer maintenance for the town’s school buildings.
Every summer, these workers move every teacher’s desk, filing cabinets and shelves into the hallway, so the custodians can go into every classroom to wash, strip and wax the floors.
“We would not do that next year,” Kobza said. “We would still wax the corridors and big areas like the cafeterias.”
He said classroom floors would still be washed, but no longer waxed. “So a it’s a different level of service than what our teachers have come to expect,” Kobza said.
Currently, an outside vendor mows the grass at every school except Masuk, which does it in-house. Kobza said all of the campuses can be mowed in-house for a savings of around $20,000.
Athletics
Administrators project an additional $6,000 in revenue from gate receipts for Masuk sporting events.
Kobza said the district could remove $7,800 from its budget proposal, which would have provided at least a $300 credit to Masuk hockey players to pay for their ice time.
Another reduction would be $12,000 from transportation for middle school athletics.”This is unfortunate,” Kobza said, “because of the bus shortage for the large majority of programs at the middle school, we had to depend on parents driving a lot — not great for us.”
Other proposed cost reductions are $10,000 for external venders for professional development, and $40,600 for Masuk supplies, such as testing software, textbooks and equipment.
The rest of the list includes potential savings from revenue accounts, which the superintendent said the district anticipates it could get away with for one year.
This includes $250,000 from the pre-K and daycare special revenue funds, and a projected $250,000 in savings for insurance. “Ron looked at insurance and said we’re trending pretty well this year,” Kobza said of Finance Director Ronald Bunovsky Jr.
The list also includes $32,500 in pension/ADEC contributions and $75,000 for Chromebooks.
Kobza said the district planned to buy $150,000 worth of Chromebooks next year, but will try to purchase $75,000 worth this year, so it will only need $75,000 in next year’s budget.
“We will still get the full $150,000,” he said. “We thought it was important to keep the One-to-One program.”
The district also anticipates $250,000 in savings from retirements.
Of one number going in the wrong direction, Kobza said a low projection for utilities may result in a $150,000 shortfall.
“If you look at that,” Kobza said of the complete list of reductions, “I need someone to give me another $61 and we’re at the 1.85.”
All respectful comments with the commenter’s first and last name are welcome.
In the March 17 Board of Education meeting, the Superintendent failed to demonstrate why these cuts are the correct cuts to be made. Instead, by plotting to energize the townspeople and student base, he and the board punt responsibility right back onto the taxpayers and parents in hopes to restore his full budget via the Board of Finance. For instance, he failed to explain why continuing to budget and spend $150,000 on a new Chromebook program is a better use of tax payer dollars and educational value rather than keeping the existing seventh grade World Language program ($197,000). Is this truly the best set of cuts that can be made or is this simply a list to help drum up support to have funding restored? I would implore both the Superintendent and the board to better explain what other options were on the table before arriving at the current list.
Has anyone done an economic assessment as to what it would do to the proposed mill rate should the $1.8M be reinstated and nothing else cut in its place? As it stands, my real estate taxes will go up over 8.5% with the current proposal of 28 mills. I’d like to see suggestions as to what else, if anything, could be cut in it’s place. I fear this is a lose-lose situation. As a reminder, in Monroe budgets are ultimately approved by town-wide referendum. We have the final say, not the politicians. Perhaps we should consider adding an advisory question to the ballot such as “if not approved, should the revised budget be higher?” so that they can better gauge the true thoughts of the voting townsfolk.