Board of Education members continued discussions regarding the proposed 2025-26 Education Budget during their Tuesday, January 28 meeting.

This comes after Superintendent of Schools Anne Uberti first presented the budget at BOE’s previous meeting on January 14, with the budget proposal totaling $92,619,033 — a roughly $5,209,967 (5.96%) increase over the current year.

BOE members invited First Selectman Jeff Capeci and Finance Director Glenys Salas to help them better understand the Medical Self-Insurance Fund, as numerous questions came in from the public concerning the topic.

Uberti noted at the last BOE meeting that one of the major drivers of budgetary pressures this year is health insurance, which alone represents a $2,420,115 increase — a 23.57% increase compared to how much it cost in last year’s budget.

She said that the unprecedented rise in insurance costs is related to the premium costs based on the projection of plans. While the town benefited from medical and dental benefits savings after moving to a self-insured plan for FY2010, Uberti said that the cost of health insurance started to increase “pretty significantly” starting in FY2023.

Uberti added that this also matches statistics showing that health insurance costs have nationally increased by an average of seven percent for the past two years.

Capeci and Salas answered several questions about rising medical costs that the BOE submitted to them ahead of the meeting, but were ready to answer more questions at the meeting.

As it stands, Capeci said that, after the plan was established in 2010, these funds have “more-or-less” gradually depleted to a point where they’re now operating in a deficit.

Salas noted that the fund maintained a “very strong” fund balance through 2018, and even ran a surplus and had a fund amount of $5.5 million. However, she added the fund ran continuous deficits starting in 2019 that have continued to increase in size.

“I believe [that this was] due to the fact that the premiums that were set were insufficient to cover medical costs as they were coming in,” Salas said.

This has in turn, she said, caused the fund balance to be fully expended at a time when medical insurance costs are increasing rapidly. Salas also noted that the medical care industry faced a lot of challenges from COVID-19 between staffing costs and general losses. Coming out of COVID-19, providers have looked to make up their losses “and then some,” according to Salas.

“And so we’re just seeing really baseline cost increases, both on the most extreme cases, our claims above our stop loss, but also on the claims that are under stop loss,” Salas explained. “We’re fundamentally just in a different place in terms of cost.”

Capeci said this has been something he and Salas have been working on with the consultants with the healthcare medical insurance board chair, and that they’ve been looking at options going forward on how to stabilize the account.

Salas sent the BOE a Medical Self-Insurance Fund Strategic Plan designed around returning the fund to a positive balance by the end of FY2026, and to flatten the curve on rising medical costs that have outpaced inflation.

The plan is divided into three sections: Financial Stabilization and Fund Balance Restoration, Cost Containment and Curve Flattening, and Monitoring and Communication. Each section has several goals, such as floating the fund through FY2025 for financial stabilization, issuing Requests for Proposals for a new plan administrator and stop-loss insurance, and regularly monitoring the fund’s financial performance and communicating with all stakeholders.

This Strategic Plan was also previously and separately approved by the Employee Medical Benefits Board, Board of Selectmen, Board of Finance, and the Legislative Council between August 12 and September 4 of last year.

As for whether these changes may be implemented in the next budget period, Salas said to “anticipate … that any favorable changes will go back to replenishing fund balance.

“I am optimistic that the Strategic Plan will help flatten cost increases so that we’re not experiencing these kinds of double-digit increases in a single fiscal year again,” Salas said.

When asked by BOE member Doria Linnetz on how they could partner with them and work to resolve this issue, Salas welcomed all BOE members to attend the next Employee Medical Benefits Board meeting.

Staffing Concerns

BOE member Brian Leonardi expressed his concerns regarding staffing reductions, notably the four lead teachers at the elementary level, as well as an elementary level special education supervisor and board-certified behavior analyst, that would be reallocated into elementary assistant principals.

These elementary assistant principals are among the several new positions that Uberti proposed for in the budget, and would act as assistant principals while also assuming responsibility for the oversight of special education in each building

Leonardi also asked if there was a protocol or any consultancy provided in terms of what is the best practice for class sizes and administration levels.

When it comes to classroom positions, Uberti said that they look at guidelines regarding class sizes and class size ratios at the elementary level, which help inform how many classroom teachers they need. Uberti said that things are “a little different” as they move up in education levels, as Reed Intermediate School operates on a two-teacher cluster, and Newtown Middle School on a five-teacher cluster.

She noted that things are “more complicated” with Newtown High School, but that they proposed eliminating three general education teachers there based on enrollment projections for next year and class sizes by each department.

As for specials such as library, PE, music, and art, Uberti noted that they cannot really cut anything at Reed and NMS without “severely changing student schedules and what’s offered to them.” At the elementary level, she said that while each school had their own music, art, and PE teacher at one point, they have been sharing staff across the four buildings for years.

Uberti said that paraeducators are a “completely different situation” since they are used for different purposes throughout the district. While four special education paras are proposed to be cut at the elementary level, she noted that those positions are currently vacant. Uberti added that they have been able to meet the needs of students’ IEPs through creative and efficient scheduling, hence proposing to eliminate them.

Regarding the lead teachers, Uberti said that their roles are highly comparable to what an assistant principal does, barring some exceptions. Uberti added that lead teachers do not evaluate other staff, and that while they are teachers and are in the teacher’s union, they do not teach, which she said makes the name “a little bit of a misnomer.”

She said that the lead teacher role was originally designed to give those in the position a quasi-administrative role which they could use to propel from to become an administrator. Uberti noted that things have considerably changed in the elementary world between gradually increasing responsibilities, and that “as the principals’ responsibilities have increased, so have the lead teachers.”

Uberti said that the elementary level special education supervisor, on the principle of being one person stretched to address issue across four buildings, struggles to build relationships with others. No position split across four buildings, she added, can be truly effective.

“When you’re not in the building on a consistent basis, it’s very difficult to build [those relationships and connections],” Uberti said.

These assistant principals would also need specialized qualifications in order to fill the position.

K-6 Spanish Program

Linnetz noted that they received a lot of public comments from people concerned about the K-6 Spanish Program, as it is one of the cuts listed in the budget proposal. She asked for Uberti’s perspective on opportunities to potentially retain that program, and what the potential impacts that would cause on the budget.

Uberti said that she stands by the proposed elimination of the program, adding that she thinks it’s a wonderful program, but falls into a “want versus a need” to her.

“I believe that we have not seen the impact of our particular program increasing test scores in our elementary schools. That’s simply not happened over the years that we’ve had Spanish,” Uberti said.

She also noted that the proficiency level of students entering the middle school has not been anything to the degree that they’d need to adjust their instruction.

“I don’t want to say that the experience of Spanish in elementary schools hasn’t made a difference ... I just don’t have anything measurable to say that it has, based on the way our program is structured,” Uberti said.

For BOE members who were interested in adding the program back into the budget, Uberti cautioned the Board that “there’s not a lot left to cut, and we would likely be looking at other positions.”

BOE Chair Alison Plante said that this would be the first of two budget discussions they’d have that week as a Board, as they were also meeting on January 30 to continue discussing the proposal. She added that they would reconvene a week later on February 4 to vote on budget adoption.

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Reporter Jenna Visca can be reached at jenna@thebee.com.