School Responds To GOP Questions About Its Finances

(Last week, Republican Town Committee chairman Carol Recht invited the Board of Education to its April 21 meeting to answer a series of questions the GOP had about school finances in advance of the April 27 townwide budget referendum. School board chairman Elaine McClure has provided The Bee with the following written answers to those questions.)

 

What is the Board of Education doing to make sure that future negotiations over administration and teacher contracts fairly reflect the realities of our economy and the marketplace?

In fact, the contracts do fairly reflect the reality of our economy and the marketplace. Contracts are negotiated within the context of the existing settlements in other towns within the same time period and region. An analysis of our settlement by Attorney Dorsey for the Board of Education at the time of settlement suggested that “the major economic changes in the proposed settlement were, in our opinion, more favorable than the board would have likely achieved in binding arbitration.”

The Board of Finance and Legislative Council each had one representative on the Board of Education’s negotiating team during the teacher contract negotiations. They will likewise be invited to have a representative each on the upcoming school administrator’s contract negotiations.

Our local elected officials reviewed the proposed teacher’s contract settlement and did not exercise their option to reject it.

In this contract we increased insurance premium share costs, beyond the average for teacher’s bargaining units in Fairfield County and the state. The board’s settlement raises the current premium share paid by Newtown teachers from 10 percent, which is capped at fixed rates, to an uncapped 11 percent for 2004-05, 12 percent for 2005-06 and 14 percent for 2005-07.

Our teacher’s salaries are less competitive when compared to other districts.

For overall salaries we ranked 9 out of 9 for contiguous towns; 21 out of 23 in Fairfield County; and 17 out of 19 in Educational Reference Group B (towns of similar wealth and parental education level.) Furthermore, our teachers work more days for their annual salaries than do teachers in these comparable districts.

Some sources report that school enrollment will be leveling off over the next ten years and that will have an impact upon the forces of competition on the negotiating process. Does that appear to be the case in Fairfield County? In Newtown?

Current projections for the next eight years suggest that there will be a leveling off of growth at the K–4 level after 04-05, but that all other levels (Reed, middle school, and high school) will continue to rise significantly from 2005-06 through the last year of the projection in 2012.

Throughout the state, county, and district we expect massive teacher retirements over the next ten years. Although there remains an ample supply of general elementary school teacher candidates, each year the quantity and quality of many secondary level subject area candidates becomes more challenging. The state’s listing of “Durational Shortage Areas” seems to continue to be growing: whereas it has been difficult finding teachers in math, science, special education, and world languages for many years now, recent years have seen this list grow to include music, technology, and this year even English has been placed on this list of hard to fill areas.

 

Has the Newtown Board of Education considered forming a coalition with other boards of education to lobby the legislature for changes in the bargaining process, especially in the area of salaries being based upon merit and tenure being reviewable? Several boards could probably hire an effective lobbyist and the cost would be de minimus given the pooling of resources.

The Connecticut Association of Boards of Education (CABE) is the statewide coalition that lobbies the legislature on behalf of Boards of Education in Connecticut. Although Newtown benefits from their legislative advocacy, the Newtown Board of Education has opted not to join CABE due to its fee structure (Approximately $8,800 to $12,000 per year.)

The tenure laws were modified several years ago to increase the pretenure probation period from three years to four years (and from 18 months to 24 months for a teacher who already earned tenure in another Connecticut school district).

 

How does the Board of Education feel about the recent court ruling that permits towns to consider the education and town budgets separately?

This is an issue for consideration under charter revision.

 

According to some statistics the percentage of dollars spent on compensation costs for instruction is proportionately lower in Newtown than some comparable towns. This suggests that we are spending a greater proportion of our compensation budget on administration. Why is this?

This assumption is not valid. We are also low in administration costs as compared to our Educational Reference Group and the state. The chart below comes from the 2002-03 Strategic School Profile for the district. In addition, the Strategic School Profile indicates that our teachers per administrator ratio is greater than the state or our Educational Reference Group average (ERG), i.e., fewer administrators per teachers.

When you look at the district expenditures as compared to the state, we spend significantly less in all categories except transportation. Our town does have the second largest square mile area in the state.

How does this impact your primary objective of having quality teachers and lower classroom sizes? Do you have statistics demonstrating the positive effect lower class size has had on student performance?

Consensus of research indicates that class size reduction, particularly in the early grades, leads to higher student achievement.

Class sizes include identified and not-yet-identified special education students. Smaller class sizes leads to improved identification of special needs, allowing for earlier intervention and less remediation.

Smaller class sizes expand the flexibility by teachers to use different instructional approaches and assignments.

As class size increases there are more distractions for students and less time for them to speak while others listen.

Class size in the upper grades affects the quality of what teachers are able to do — particularly with writing assignments.

Many of the classrooms are too small to hold large class sizes.

Class size can affect safety in programs such as science and technology education.

 

There is a great deal of discussion about how educational mandates and requirements have changed over the years. The cost of special education and the requirements of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) have a tremendous impact upon school budgets. However, in reviewing Connecticut General Statutes 10–16b, “Prescribed Courses of Study,” can you explain the distinction between those curriculum requirements and past requirements? How do any identified differences translate into higher costs?

CGS 10–16b has not changed significantly in the past ten years. A revision of that law is currently in committee.

The state is in the process of revising the curriculum frameworks documents in all of the core content areas as part of the mandates from the No Child Left Behind Law. These revisions and the new tests will cause the district to have to revise our curriculum documents and support materials to be in alignment with the state. Newtown is currently in process of revising curriculum in language arts and mathematics. We will be working on science and social studies in the next school year.

As noted above, we also need to comply with other mandates such as:

IDEA — inclusion of special education students in home school and regular classes to the extent possible.

504 — Equal opportunities for students with disabilities.

Antibullying legislation.

 

How many special education students are we serving in Newtown? How many need to be transported to other school districts? Why? Can we handle their needs more efficiently? Can we tap into other sources of funding for children with special needs? Maybe several Boards of Education should cooperate in pursuing and securing designated funding for schools that are equipped to handle special needs to defray the costs to the towns and taxpayers? Would this be a more efficient way to handle costs of special education than each town paying separately for each child served?

We currently serve 523 students identified with special needs. None of these students are transported to other school districts; 28 are in out of district placements, down from 32 on October 1, 2003.

Education Connection, a state sponsored Regional Education Service Center (RESC) coordinates combined services programs for the region in order to provide cost savings and efficiencies. We participate in Project SUCCEED for medically fragile multiply handicapped students and ACCESS for students in need of psychiatric care.

We have created several in-district programs such as the Newtown Autism Program (NAP) in order to reduce out of district costs and provide effective programming for our students.

 

What is the current rate of reimbursement from the state and feds for mandated programs? According to Andrew Buzzi, there is a position devoted to securing those funds. What if anything can the Republican Town Committee do to help those efforts?

There is no specific rate, but rather a formula, for the Education Cost Sharing Grant, which includes many variables including the wealth of the town, overall student enrollment, number of special education students, number of students on free or reduced lunch, etc. We receive the state minimum due to our wealth. We are budgeted to receive $3,645,000 for next year.

Our special education supervisor position has helped us to cut costs by reducing out-of-district placements and our ability to pursue Medicaid reimbursements. We estimate our anticipated Medicaid reimbursements to be approximately $30,000 for this year.

 

There are rumors about “waste” in our school system, such as working computers being dumped, etc. Are these types of allegations investigated? What is the Board of Education doing to uncover wasteful practices and address them? Are the decisionmakers who cause such waste held accountable?

This district functions with very little waste. Two years ago some used equipment including 22 computers, 20 monitors, keyboards, surge protector, and seven printers were donated to the district by a company in the region. These computers were put in a pile at Fairfield Hills because we had no place to store them until the technology repair team had time to check them out to see if they were working properly and set up the proper programs. In instances where the donated materials were not operational, the equipment was dismantled for parts with the unused portions sent out for recycling. All determinations of those donated items are under the supervision of the director of information technology. Currently, most of those computers are in use in the district. The extra monitors are stored for use when an existing monitor needs to be replaced. One of the printers is being used to print the payroll.

The budget was built on the most conservative enrollment projections available. The budget the taxpayers are being asked to vote on is a 6.86 percent increase over the 2003-04 budget. The fixed costs exclusive of growth in enrollment (4.72 percent) and costs directly related to growth in enrollment (2.09 percent) together accounts for 6.81 percent. The remaining 0.05 percent is all that remains to address the additional needs of the school system.