In a 4-1 vote, the Board of Education approved and adopted Superintendent of Schools Kevin Smith’s $93,540,759 proposed budget for FY 2024-25, which amounts to a 4.88% increase over the BOE’s current $89.1-million operating budget.
With high levels of concern being expressed by the Board of Finance regarding the amount of the BOE’s request, Smith brought the number down from the 5.56% increase he originally proposed. He removed just under $600,000, in part through consolidating bus routes for a $190,000 saving, and also with what he hopes will be an approval by the Board of Selectmen for a technology lease that will save $200,000.
“I’m happy to see that we were able to find reductions and savings in things that don’t affect staff and programming,” BOE Chair Ruth DeLuca said, with a $140,000 reduction also found by eliminating the vacant humanities instructional coach position at Middlebrook School, along with $48,560 saved in the special services budget for various items.
“I think where we would have to go next is a place that I’m glad that we’re not going,” she said.
BOE member Heather Priest voted against the budget. She stated that she wasn’t happy with how the money was being allocated, but did not share any specifics about it.
“I’m not mad at increasing the budget,” said Priest, who has been outspoken in her opposition to instructional coaching and whose husband is a teacher at Middlebrook. “I’m just frustrated with some of the allocations.”
“I still stand behind some things I said earlier … … I think increasing the budget is a good idea … I just don’t always align with where it’s allocated right now,” she said.
“I appreciate the cuts,” she said. “I appreciate the effort.”
BOE member Pam Ely was not in attendance but, through DeLuca, shared a message in support of the budget.
While Smith didn’t share any broad commentary on the budget, DeLuca shared some thoughts following the vote.
“We’re living in a difficult budgetary period,” she said. “This is the second year in a row that our budget is frozen and it makes operations more difficult and it makes it hard to advance the type of program and the types of services that I think our community and our town have come to expect.”
“I think that this fulfills the need … Next year it gets us to a place where we get to provide for our kids in a way that we feel aligns with our mission and our values,” she said. “It puts back some of the things that unfortunately we had to take away last year with some of the clubs and stipends. It allows us to move forward with our continuous improvement program.”
In detailing his decision to cut the Middlebrook coach position, Smith noted in a memo to the BOE dated Feb. 15, “Recognizing the challenge we’ve had finding a high-quality candidate to assume the Middlebrook Humanities Coach position, we are proposing to temporarily combine the (Wilton High School and Middlebrook) coach position, which enables us to take a $140,784 reduction. The current WHS humanities coach is still contemplating this change, but regardless of his own decision, I believe we can work an arrangement to provide some coaching support to (Middlebrook) and reduce the FTE.”
Regarding the technology lease agreement, Smith said, “[The BOS members] haven’t approved that yet, so I’m a little bit nervous about having you guys vote on this number, but I think it’s a calculated risk at this point.”
The Board of Finance’s public hearing on the BOE budget is scheduled for Wednesday, March 20.
Heather Priest should absolutely not be voting on budgets – the conflict of interest there is simply staggering – and I’m pretty sure this is in the category of things she was expected to recuse herself from.
It’s also a rather foolish move on her part, since she’s up for re-election next year, and now the hypothetical conflicts of interest the DTC and Sara Sclafani correctly warned everyone about have become actual conflicts of interest. And to the extent that the RTC put her up for that 2-year slot hoping she’d stir up a ruckus about coaching, two sad little lone budget opposition votes will be an appropriately worthless payoff.
The fact that she is voting against an increase – despite perceived conflicts of interest that one would think would push her to vote for an increase – proves that she is credible and fighting for what she believes.
I am beginning to think that you are reflexively anti Republican and will say anything negative you can when someone is painted with that brush.
If she was voting for more money for teachers or more money for the school system, that THAT would be demonstrating a conflict of interest.
She didn’t vote against the increase. “I’m not mad at increasing the budget,” “I’m just frustrated with some of the allocations.” I think we ought to interpret that to mean that she supported the budget increase but wanted it to go to different things, and I would infer from her past statements that she specifically wanted to spend less money on coaching and more money on some other program she likes better.
And having any say in those allocations is a completely unacceptable conflict of interest; it’s impossible to adequately disentangle those decisions from her husband’s career. Even if it didn’t affect him directly, there could be some professional rival who would be impacted by a reduction in the coaching budget, or some professional ally who would be impacted by an increase in another budget, or it could affect his workload or responsibilities in myriad other ways; we simply can’t be certain whether or how it would affect him, and that’s why she should not have participated in this vote.
(I should add, however, that I personally believe that her vote does affect him directly, because the coaching program affects all teachers at Middlebrook and so eliminating it would necessarily have an impact on his professional life)