nothin Hamden BOE Readies For Fall, With Cuts | New Haven Independent

Hamden BOE Readies For Fall, With Cuts

Sam Gurwitt photo

Chief Operating Officer Tom Ariola, pre-Covid.

As administrators scramble to figure out what school will look like in the fall, the Hamden Board of Education entered the 2020 – 2021 fiscal year with a host of uncertainties, and with about $2 million in cuts.

In February, the board passed a budget that asked for $91,496,089 from the town. Mayor Curt Leng first cut the board’s budget down to $91 million. Then, facing a tough financial picture, the Legislative Council cut the board further, funding it at last year’s allotment of $89,394,925.

After about a month of discussions and proposals of what should go on the chopping block, the board passed a budget last week with about $2 million in cuts.

While administrators tried to avoid making staff take the hit for Hamden’s fiscal woes, the new budget does include a modest reduction in positions. The board did manage to leave most funding intact for equity initiatives that board members said were at the top of their priority list this year.

After the council voted in May to flat-fund the board, board members met to begin discussing what to shave off their budget. Superintendent Jody Goeler originally proposed a series of cuts that would have eliminated positions across the district, would have removed funding for a line to smooth over inequities between PTAs, and would have eliminated $200,000 for a curriculum rewrite, among other cuts.

When they saw that plan, board members said they were not willing to cut the equity-related initiatives the budget had prioritized this year. Over the course of June, board members worked with administrators to create a package of cuts that still includes layoffs, though fewer, and provides at least some funding for the curriculum rewrite and PTA equity fund.

The cuts do still go deep, however. The board eliminated two popular programs: the Navigator program at the middle school, and the Talented and Gifted (TAG) program at the district’s elementary schools. The Navigator program serves students who benefit from a more hands-on approach, and the TAG program brings precocious students from across the district together one day a week.

When you cut this kind of money, you’ve got to make real cuts,” said district Chief Operating Officer Tom Ariola, who is in charge of the district’s finances.

The cuts eliminate 12 full-time positions. Those positions include the four Navigator teachers (though the board added three support positions at the middle school), one teacher at the Church Street School, a theater teacher at the middle school, a teacher at the high school, the TAG teacher, two specialists, a district food service coordinator, and a central office clerk. The board’s new budget also leaves an HVAC maintenance position vacant. It also included $40,000 in concessions from the custodian union. If the board does not come to an agreement for that $40,000, it would need to eliminate another maintenance position.

It’s unclear how many of those cuts will result in actual layoffs, because there are vacant positions throughout the district that may absorb teachers whose positions were eliminated.

The board also cut part-time student support positions at elementary schools, saving $80,000. This was one of the cuts that board members said might hurt the most.

Other cuts include $110,000 in concessions from the administrators’ union, cuts to engineering and architectural services for new school building projects, and cuts to supplies and materials.

The board’s budget is split into two parts. The larger part is the portion the board pays for with funds provided by the town. The council flat-funded this portion at around $89 million. The board’s cuts to the town-funded portion of its budget total about $2.1 million.

The board also budgets some expenses separately, which are supposed to be paid for the town’s Alliance Grant. The Alliance Grant is a state grant that goes to Connecticut’s 30 lowest-performing districts

The Alliance Grant is a part of the education cost sharing (ECS) funding that goes to each municipality in the state. Unlike the rest of the ECS funds, though, the alliance money is supposed to go directly to the board of education, instead of to the town to offset what that town pays the board. The board has to come up with a budget for how it will use those grant funds.

This year, Hamden’s Alliance Grant is supposed to increase by $1.1 million, bringing the town’s total grant amount to $6.6 million. The council, however, counted $450,000 of that increase as revenue for the town in its budget. That means the board can’t use $450,000 of the increase it’s supposed to see this year.

Normally, the board would not count on increases in alliance funding, in case the state doesn’t end up keeping the preliminary promises it makes. This year, the board’s budget does bill some items to that $1.1 million increase, though if the town doesn’t end up getting it, it will be possible to cut it without having to lay anyone off mid-year, said Ariola.

The board was able to preserve many of its equity initiatives by moving them to the alliance budget. The board’s original budget included an extra $200,000 for a curriculum rewrite so the board can start crafting a more culturally inclusive curriculum. It managed to leave that funding intact by moving $200,000 for curricular rewrites from the town-funded portion of the budget to the alliance budget.

The final budget did the same with $100,000 of professional development funds. It also included $70,000 to smooth over inequities between PTAs across the district in the alliance budget, down from the $125,000 the board originally budgeted. The alliance budget also gained $60,000 for a family resource center at the Ridge Hill School. The board had originally budgeted $90,000 for the resource center in its town-funded portion of the budget.

The cuts do not touch special education, which administrators said is fully funded this year for the first time in years. In the past, the board has frequently run six-digit shortfalls in its special education budget, and has had to scramble to come up with cuts or extra funds mid-year.

Uncertain Reopening

Zoom

Asst. Superintendent Chris Melillo.

After state Education Commissioner Miguel Cardona announced last week that Connecticut schools would be reopening in the fall, Hamden still faces a great deal of uncertainty in determining what the fall will look like.

Tuesday evening, two concurrent meetings grappled with that question. The board’s goals and evaluations committee held a special meeting to discuss feedback from surveys about distance learning in the district. At the same time, BOE members Walter Morton, Melissa Kaplan, and Melinda Saller met with PTA presidents to get their feedback about how the end of the school year had gone.

The gist: distance learning is hard, and it works OK for some students and not for others. But if the alternative is sending students to a school where they could possibly be infected with Covid-19, some parents would rather keep their kids home.

Director of Innovation, Technology, and Communications Karen Kaplan presented the results of a few surveys the district had taken of students, parents, and teachers in the district at the goals and evaluations meeting.

The latest survey, which asked 800 parents whether they would send their kids back to school in the fall, found that a significant chunk of parents may not. If conditions are similar to how they are now, 72 percent of parents might or definitely would return their kids. 28 percent, on the other hand, likely or definitely would not. But if conditions are worse than they are now, almost the exact opposite would be true. Only 27 percent of parents said they definitely would or might send their kids back. The remaining 74 percent said they likely or definitely would not.

If conditions are better than they are now, 88 percent would definitely or might return, while only 12 percent would not.

The survey also found that parents at schools that serve lower-income populations were less likely to want to send their kids back to school. In general, the percentages of parents who would not return their kids in the fall were higher at the district’s Title I schools than at its non-Title I schools.

At an operations committee meeting last week, Assistant Superintendent Chris Melillo said he and his team are working on a plan for the next school year, and that a draft would be released in the next few weeks. He said the plan might involve bringing elementary school students to class just four days a week. Middle and high school students would rotate, so that one half comes at one time, and the other half do distance learning, and then switch.

He said the plan will also likely include using all buildings in the district, including those that are not currently in use as elementary schools, in order to ensure better social distancing. That would mean some students would not be going to their home schools.

Those plans would all involve some degree of distance learning, which teachers and families learned to do, with varying degrees of success, this spring.

Having kids at home trying to do school presents significant challenges for some parents who have to work. 38 percent of parents said they need their children to go to school because they need childcare.

For parents with young children in particular, distance learning is tough.

Tuesday’s PTA meeting.

It’s not sustainable from a working family standpoint,” said Dunbar Hill PTA President Sarah Morrill at Tuesday’s PTAs meeting. She said her husband had to go in to work, and she was working from home. Having two kids at home trying to do school online made it very tough for her to get work done, she said, especially because her kindergartener needed a lot of help.

Many parents also can’t help their kids with their work. 46 percent of parents said they needed their kids to go back to school because they can’t provide them with the educational support they need.

72 percent said they would prefer a combination of in-person schooling and distance learning.

Distance learning seems to have mixed effects. Some parents of high schoolers at Tuesday’s PTA meeting said it worked for their kids. They didn’t have as many distractions, so they were able to focus on work.

But for others, like Morrill and other parents of young children, it was tough.

Among students, distance learning also had mixed results. Only 13 percent of students said in an end-of-year survey that they had learned more distance learning than through in-person school. 50 percent said they had learned less, and 37 percent said they had learned about the same amount. Many said they missed their classmates, though others said it was nice to have the extra flexibility that online class afforded them.

The district will present a plan for the fall to the board soon. Once the draft plan is released, it will also seek input from parents.

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