Support For A ‘Terrible’ Budget

To the Editor:_I hope that everyone will vote to approve the town budget at the referendum on April 24.

This isn’t a good budget. It’s a terrible budget. $800,000, and eight teaching positions, have been cut from the proposed education budget, in order to hold school expenditures in our rapidly growing town to an arbitrary and unrealistic 7.5 percent increase. This will produce unacceptable class sizes, above state guidelines, in several of our schools. A budget like this will keep us safely ensconced near the very bottom of the list of towns in the state, for expenditure per pupil, and for teachers’ salaries. With the overcrowding we will now have to endure, it may only be a matter of time before Newtown’s jewel, its fine school system, loses its lustre. So much of our town’s pride, and property values, depend on the continued excellence of our school system. Yet you’d never know this by looking at the budget we are now being asked to approve.

I hope the budget will pass. If it doesn’t, we will have to endure even deeper cuts and even larger class sizes. The sad fact is that the only thing that would embarrass us more than passing this budget would be to turn it down. Please vote “Yes” to approve the town budget on April 24.

Dana Brand

32 Hi Barlow Road, Newtown                                      April 15, 2001