Budget Forum January 30th, 6 p.m. At Smalley Elementary School
The Board of Education (BOE) will hold a budget forum on Thursday, January 30th, to hear a presentation and give the public an opportunity to weigh in on the proposed school budget that will go to the Mayor and Common Council.
The budget forum will be held at Smalley Elementary School auditorium, 175 West Street at 6 p.m. and available virtually at http://CSDNB.ORG
On January 23rd the BOE approved the Superintendent’s 2025-2026 budget plan, but eliminated an $818,000 line item from his recommendations to assign new campus safety officers (CSOs) to elementary schools. The estimated budget totals $142,612,639, a 12% increase over the 2024-2025 budget.
Acknowledging that “no superintendent wants to submit a 12% increase,” Dr. Tony Gasper, the School Superintendent, states that “the biggest single driver of the budget increase this year is the accelerating amount of students with disabilities and the severity of these children’s needs.” Dr. Gasper told the BOE that $57 million of the $128,000,000 currently provided by the city through property taxes is for special education. Approximately 25% of students (2,465 students with disabilities) are in need of special education in the 10,000-student system.
According to the school district’s budget plan school staff members applied three levels of priority to each item ranking priority 1 items as “mission critical” amounting to 85% of the school budget in 2023-2024 and priority 3 at 100% or a “flat budget.”
New Britain’s legislators and local officials will support new legislation (HB 5001) sponsored by House Speaker Matt Ritter and Majority Leader Jason Rojas “to improve the quality and delivery of special education services.” State Rep. David DeFronzo (D-26) said new funding will be considered in the bill, including taking the number of special ed students a district serves into account in setting the ECS formula and incentivizing in-district and regional services over outplacements.
Over the last decade New Britain has received steady increases in educational cost sharing (ECS) and other state support for schools as a financially distressed city. Local aid, however, has been static, losing ground to inflation. Currently, the city ranks 160th out of 165 districts in the amount of local support for education at $16,814 per student. The state median for local aid is $21,676.
The local $143 million general fund budget plan for the next school year estimates that 50.5% will come from state ECS funding and 49.5% will come from local taxes. Overall funding is expected to total approximately $212 million with additional funding from the state Alliance program, federal title I, II, III funds, priority school district funding and other grant funds. The exact amount of state funding for schools will be known shortly before the Legislature adjourns in June.
Aside from supporting current operations (no new programs are contemplated), the BOE budget would add additional positions including an assistant principal at Chamberlain School, a 50% FTE board certified behavior analyst, 20 para-educators to address needs of students with individualized education plans, one full time school psychologist, two full-time social workers and two special education teachers. All additional positions would be funded with CT Alliance funds that augment ECS funding.
The proposed BOE budget will be sent to the Board of Finance and Taxation (BFT) for review. The BFT, which reviews requests from all city departments, will send a recommended budget to Mayor Stewart who will then submit a budget to the Common Council for review and approval. The Common Council will hold a special meeting on the BOE budget on May 8th, in addition to holding public hearings. A final budget needs to be adopted by June.
