Are School Paychecks Too Big,

Or Too Numerous?

To the Editor:

It is that time of the year again, when our town officials are preparing their budgets to be reviewed, consolidated, and presented to the voters in a few months. Preliminary forecasts indicate another year of increased spending and consequently higher taxes for property owners.

As in previous years, the added taxes will most likely be the result of increases in the school budget, and this is where the budgetmakers need to focus their attention.

The creation of next year’s school budget begins with the submissions from school principals to the superintendent, then to the school board, on to the Board of Finance, to the Legislative Council, and finally presented on a ballot for a public vote in early spring.

The biggest line item in a school budget is salaries and benefits and you will hear repeatedly that the salaries and benefits afforded to our school personnel are competitive with other school districts and in fact at the lower end compared to many others. This is very true. What is not discussed or debated, however, is the number of personnel employed in our schools. The staffing portion is at such a high percentage of the total budget not because we are so generous to our employees, but because we have so many of them.

To illustrate this one can look at an elementary school in our district, as I did, and find that it is staffed with 64 people, including 21 teachers, 15 specialists, 4 administrators, 20 educational assistants, and 4 custodians. These are salaried personnel and do not include the many volunteers and PTA members who contribute their time and effort to the school. We are staffing a school, grades K–4 and approximately 318 students, with 64 paid personnel.

If this is typical of the other schools in our district, then the superintendent and school board need to take a hard look at new requests for additional personnel in next year’s budget. While it may ideal to enjoy these kinds of staffing levels, the present economic climate demands that each and every salaried position be justified by our educational leaders. If we cannot pay our school professionals as well as most other districts, perhaps it’s because there are too many of them.

George Caracciolo

Schoolhouse Hill Road, Newtown                             January 6, 2004