Westport School Budget Update

Westport  School Budget Update

$1.7 million was the amount of money that the Westport Board of Finance (BOF) used to say Westport Public Schools had to cut from the 2017-2018 school budget.

However, after many meetings and the process of mitigation, the current amount of money that will have to be cut is only $1 million, and that number could change as the process continues to unfold.

In an April 18 email to staff, Dr. Colleen Palmer outlined the latest changes.

“At the meeting with the Board of Finance the Wednesday before vacation [April 12], it was standing room only in the Town Hall auditorium as the Board of Education requested restoration of $700k. After five hours of listening to community members comment on the education budget, the BOF voted to restore $310k and to support the BOE as a backstop for its health reserve (allowing the BOE to save another $480k) The district has since presented a list of mitigation strategies that totaled about $1 million out of the $1.7 million reduction asked for by the BOF,” wrote Dr. Palmer.

Because the district now has less to cut from the budget, resources like the Workshop program and music lessons will “likely” not be left untouched wrote Palmer.

The state of Connecticut is in debt. Governor Danel Malloy through his budget has essentially told towns across Connecticut that they would have contribute more to helping pay shortfalls. This has forced towns to trim, cut and debate what should stay in the budgets, what should be cut, and what could be addressed later.

Hartford has still not passed a budget and therefore the status is still changing.

In March, the BOE had discussed some drastic cuts. It discussed plans to cut four paraprofessionals, let go of crossing guards, plan to have Bedford share a school psychologist with Coleytown, cut the director of secondary education. The BOE discussed cutting back on individual music lessons in grades four through eight, reducing the Workshop program, and deducting $2,000 worth of library books from each school in the district.

Parents and school board members alike protested against any supplementary cuts. However, the BOF ended up voting 5-2 in favor of continuous cutting, and are concerned about the state’s current financial situation.

Despite the BOF’s proposal, the Schools Superintendent Dr. Colleen Palmer and the BOE strongly recommended only $977,000 in cuts. She and Michael Gordon, the school board chairman, argued that cutting more would lead to a negative impact on students and teachers within the district.

The RTM votes to approve the budget on Tuesday, May 2.