nothin Board of Ed OKs New Budget | New Haven Independent

Board of Ed OKs New Budget

Aliyya Swaby File Photo

Board of Education members unanimously approved a proposed $425 million budget for the upcoming fiscal year. Wednesday, it heads to the Board of Alders.

Victor De La Paz (pictured), the district’s chief financial officer, explained a few recent updates to the budget breakdown at Monday night’s board meeting at John Martinez School, where the vote took place. He has fielded questions about the budget from ed board members and the public during previous two full board meetings.

The Board of Alders must now consider the budget and vote on it.

Click here to access the updated budget — and answers to board members’ questions — through the district website.

Click here for a direct link to the budget book.

The proposed all-funds budget includes in-kind contributions and a $3.3 million local funding boost from the city. The schools originally sought a bigger boost from the city; Mayor Toni Harp agreed to the smaller increase instead.

De La Paz has said the district can find savings of about $3.9 million, in large part by allowing the natural attrition” of specific staff members, by not rehiring people in positions deemed no longer necessary to schools. Board members have questioned how that plan will work and whether it will be successful.

Monday night, De La Paz said the district is developing a staffing model” to allow them to make informed decisions on hiring or non-rehiring” using data on existing staff in each school. The critical time” for facilitating the attrition is between now and mid-August, he said.

Board member Alex Johnston asked what the district’s plan was to explain to school leaders why certain positions were not being re-filled in their schools, especially because their view of needed resources was likely to differ from the district’s view for the school in a larger context.

Superintendent Garth Harries said the district is committed” to making sure school leaders were part of that decision-making process. He noted that the personnel report did not include any recent appointments of full-time teachers, in line with the budget proposal.

In a public comment after the meeting, Dave Cicarella, president of the teachers union, said the district should be careful not to eliminate high-level classes that are likely to have low enrollment. Just because an AP course or Latin course draws eight students instead of the full 25, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t offer those courses,” he said.

Cicarella also said the district should not take the teacher evaluations into consideration when making staffing decisions. They were never designed for that purpose,” he said.

During the budget presentation Monday night, De La Paz also specified that the district would could cut $400,000 in transportation costs by making sure minimizing the number of stops school buses make and making dismissal times more standard. Fuel costs have been locked in at 90 cents lower than the current contract,” he said, and use of fuel will be monitored.

The budget is not static, Harries and De La Paz told the board. If projected enrollments at individual schools exceed or go below actual enrollments in the fall, school budgets could change accordingly, De La Paz said. The budget will change based on staffing needs…Significant changes to the budget will be discussed at Finance and Operations Committee meetings.”

Keisha Hannans, principal of Celentano School, said in a public comment that principals have not yet received school-level budgets.

Harries told the Independent that principals received that information more than a month ago, when the Board of Ed first began discussing the budget in its committees. Schools are anxious” about potential budget cuts, he said, and so are we. That’s why we engaged in the process so deeply this year.”

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