Newtown High School PTSA Conducts

Internal Poll On Advocating For The Budget

By Eliza Hallabeck

Reflecting on the relatively low voter turnout on April 26 for the first referendum on the 2011-12 budget, Newtown High School PTSA President Carla Kron said the high school parent group wanted to learn how its members feel regarding advocating for the upcoming second round. That is why a poll was e-mailed out to roughly 300 people on Tuesday, May 10.

By Wednesday morning, when Ms Kron, NHS PTSA Treasurer Chris Haitz, and NHS PTSA First Vice President Jill Mossbarger sat down for an early meeting, the three PTSA leaders were already looking over preliminary results.

While Ms Mossbarger said the group will wait until the end of the week for responses, Ms Kron shared results from the first nearly 70 respondents on Tuesday.

According to Ms Kron, 59 percent of the respondents at that point said the NHS PTSA should advocate support for the 2011-12 budget, 32 percent believed the group should advocate for Please Vote only, and 9 percent said the group should advocate for a No vote.

When the 2011-12 budget first went before voters at the end of April, it represented a spending plan that would have distributed $37,922,648 to town operations and $68,703,427 to the school district. The defeated budget also represented a 2.25 percent increase in operational costs over the current spending year.

Voter turnout on April 26 represented roughly 20 percent of qualified voters in Newtown, and the budget was defeated by 266 votes.

“I think it will make people consider voting,” Ms Kron about the PTSA survey, “and we wanted to know what our membership thought about advocating by the board.”

The Legislative Council has since voted to send a $105.6 million second round budget request to referendum on Tuesday, May 17. The new budget proposal represents a roughly $1.1 million reduction from the first budget proposal, with roughly $853,000 reduced from the Board of Education’s budget.

According to the PTSA leaders, this was the first time a poll was taken of members using e-mail. Ms Haitz said it reached many more members than holding a meeting would have.