The Board of Education heard its last expected budget presentations at its meeting on Tuesday, January 12.

Over three budget workshop meetings, starting January 5, the school board heard from presenters on different aspects of the superintendent’s proposed 2016-17 spending plan.

As presented by Superintendent of Schools Joseph V. Erardi, Jr, the budget plan is $74,361,623, or a 3.87 percent increase in spending over the current year.

The proposal will be reviewed by the school board until it is expected to adopt its budget at a scheduled February 4 meeting. The budget will then go before the Board of Finance and the Legislative Council for review and adoption before heading to referendum in April.

Presentations began with school principals representing their budgets, which is detailed in a separate story in this week’s paper. The board then heard from presenters on the pupil personnel, special education, and health budgets, and for more information on those see a separate story in this week’s paper. From there the board heard about the technology, curriculum, general services, Continuing Education, benefits, plant services and operations, and transportation budgets.

The biggest change in the technology budget, Director of Technology Carmella Amodeo said on Thursday, January 7, is creating a model to stabilize equipment expenditure. Ms Amodeo said she worked to create a method for maintaining and replacing equipment as it ages out. Her plan, she said, includes the district’s entire equipment inventory.

The information technology services budget in the 2016-17 spending plan is listed as $1,612,515, including Ms Amodeo’s $700,000 proposal for equipment spending.

“This will allow for better planning and we also need to not forget about new initiatives,” said Ms Amodeo.

Assistant Superintendent Jean Evans Davila presented the curriculum budget on Tuesday, January 12.

“The proposed curriculum budget for 2016-17 includes a number of efficiencies that will allow us to accomplish more work of higher quality while spending less money,” said Ms Davila, adding the efficiencies were based on a “reconceptualization of the curriculum development model” that will be overseen by district steering committees.

Ms Davila explained a number of anticipated ways the new curriculum development will be helpful for the district, including allowing grade level vertical alignment and enhancing new teachers support. The curriculum budget, she said, will also enhance the district’s kindergarten world language program to first grade, by increasing the part-time language instructor to full-time.

“The impact of the new structure of curriculum development training…serves to make our costs and our outcomes more efficient and better leveraged with the end result delivering more enhancements for the continuous improvement of our curriculum programs and staff development,” Ms Davila said. “This budget in my opinion supports all of our learners in the Newtown community, and that includes our students as well as our staff.”

Director of Security Mark Pompano answered the board’s questions about the security budget, listed as $335,641 in the budget proposal, up $61,127, primarily due to three security officers positions that were covered by the School Emergency Response to Violence (SERV) grant that will now be covered by the district’s budget.

From speaking with district staff and parents, Dr Erardi said he felt it was important to maintain “present practice for the new school year” for safety and security.

The school district, Business Director Ron Bienkowski explained, is in its fourth year of its five-year contract with All-Star Transportation for local transportation for students. The district also has a contract with All-Star for its special education services, which has two more years, and with Education Connection Transportation for vocational transport, which has two more years. Mr Bienkowski said the contract increase this year for the main All-Star Transportation contract is five percent, and the Education Connection Transportation contract is 1.72 percent. In the proposed budget the local transportation costs are listed as $2,768,155, the vocational transportation contract is $96,720, and the local special education transportation contract is $511,671.

The total proposed 2016-17 transportation budget is listed as $4,465,588, a 5.11 percent increase over the 2015-16 budget.

Mr Bienkowski said transportation contracts are frequently made with a larger increase in the final year, with the understanding that districts can renegotiate the contract early to potentially decrease the increase and lengthen the contract term.

Board members asked a range of questions about the transportation contract, and discussed the possibility of renegotiating All-Star’s main contract with the town.

When asked whether declining enrollment in the district would decrease transportation costs, Mr Bienkowski said, “In spite of the fact that the population is going down, ridership is going up.”

Dr Erardi said the district pressed “as hard as we could possibly press” to reduce the fleet, but bus rides would have lengthened.

The board discussed adding the topic of renegotiating All-Star Transportation’s main contract to a future board meeting. The next regular meeting is slated for Tuesday, January 19.