To the Editor:
Wilton is going through another tough budget decision, trying to figure out how to fund our schools properly without significantly increasing our already high taxes. Yet an even bigger issue is this week’s (Thursday, April 6) Wilton’s Board of Education vote to bring in a program that would divert existing resources away from Wilton children and increase our education budget over time, with no data to support the program’s success or imaginary costlessness.
At Thursday’s meeting, Wilton’s Board of Education will vote on joining the Open Choice program.
- This program will bring in five students each year (to start, it could increase in the future) from Norwalk.
- We will get to a steady state of [around] 65 children (five each in K-12) once fully implemented if we add five students per year. You should think of this as a vote to add 60-plus children from out of district — nearly three classrooms worth — not five children.
- Wilton will receive $3,000 per student, vs. the roughly $23,000 (and increasing) cost per student that we spend each year to educate our children. The sending district keeps half of its education cost-sharing (ECS) grant (from the state) for each child enrolled in the program.
- Once a child is in our district, we are committed to that student for his/her entire education. Children cannot be removed for disruptive behavior or due to budget issues.
The argument for Open Choice is that these seats are ‘open’ and that there is no cost for each student, but this is just simply illogical and not true. A large portion of the cost will be diverted attention — having one extra kid in what was a 19-child classroom reduces the teacher’s time per student by over 5%! Do you want your kid to get 5% less one-on-one time with his/her teacher next year? It also reduces specialist time per student and administrator time per student by an even greater amount. Nearly all of the BoE budget, beyond utilities, our bus contract, and the superintendent’s salary (combined [approximately] 8% of the budget) are variable costs that go up and down with enrollment — teacher, administrator, and support salaries. School grounds are covered in the town budget, not the BoE’s budget. Adding 60-plus students to our school system increases the demand for our variable costs and reduces the time these great educators have with each of your children.
Should a child be special needs, a portion of the extra costs will be paid by the Wilton taxpayer — this is how it works in Westport, which is an Open Choice participant. Additionally, the responsibility for holding planning and placement team (PPT) meetings and developing an IEP also will belong to Wilton — this clearly diverts resources away from Wilton’s special education children (again, not costless).
If you are thinking, ‘only five kids won’t take many resources from our kids and special needs resources,’ consider how this will scale once implemented. In 2020 Westport received 67 children (in a much bigger district than ours) through Open Choice, costing nearly $1.3 million, while receiving less than $200,000 from the state. If we think that 60-plus students can somehow be educated for free (or near free at $3,000 each) with no dilution of resources, then I think we’re kidding ourselves!
Also, you might want to ask yourself why Ridgefield, New Canaan, and Darien all decided against Open Choice. Or if you’d want more data to look at than the only study the state has done to look at the results of Open Choice in 2015, which showed no improvement in outcomes for the children from the sending district.
The Board of Education’s duty is to Wilton’s students and taxpayers — I urge them to vote against this costly, resource-diverting program, and vote in favor of our children and special needs resources.
Regards,
Warren Serenbetz
Weren’t you one of the loudest voices supporting cuts to the Board of Education budget just a few days ago? Complaining about the potential cost of 5 more students when the Board of Finance just cut the budget by more than what Westport is spending to educate 67 makes it hard to take this comment seriously; if you really supported Wilton’s schools as anything other than a convenient excuse for whatever it is you actually believe, you would do so consistently.
My daughter was a special needs student in Wilton from K-12, her entire education. We lived in Wilton the entire time and after – 19 years total. Her father still lives in Wilton. A LOCAL resident, a physician with children (I was the babysitter for the family) severely admonished me for the cost the Wilton school district was spending on my daughter. So I don’t believe this will be popular.
(I should note that I’m not endorsing your numbers or your larger argument – Westport isn’t actually spending that much and we’d be spending barely anything – but if Open Choice versus Budget Cuts is going to be the theme of the November elections, I hope Democrats point out hypocrisy like this loudly and frequently)
I am not against the program, but I am very concerned that our community doesn’t fully understand the cost implication of joining for the 2023-2024 school year and beyond. It is NOT minimal cost. As you mentioned, Warren, the financial cost to the Wilton tax payers to participate in this program will increase substantially with each school year. It is NOT a break even situation for Wilton.In addition, the BOE must now regroup and slash over $1 million from their proposed budget. There are other school districts, like Woodbridge, who voted against adding additional students for the 2023-2024 school year, due to the financial implications. The fact that a vote to participate in this program is still on the table, baffles me. Wilton cannot afford to join the Open Choice program for the 2023-2024 school year.
This feels like the wrong time to have this debate. Let the dust settle on the budget process and see where taxes land. And if the economy goes into a recession, we will be facing even higher taxes….
Vote no, get more data, and revisit next year.
And if there are “open” seats, let’s reduce the size of the classroom and increase the student-teacher ratio. And long term if the size of the school is trending down in a sustained fashion, let’s downsize the school system and return money to taxpayers.
So let’s say you have 12 kindergarten classrooms and 235 kindergartners, and your goal is to have 20 kids per classroom. You don’t want to cut back to 11 classrooms because that’d push you past 21, but you could add 5 more kids while still maintaining 20. I believe that’s what they’re talking about with ‘open seats’ – remainders. Those 5 kids are nearly cost-free, but that the state is giving us $15,000/year to host them in our school. 5 kids per grade is never going to be enough of a difference to add (or prevent the removal of) an extra section, which is why we’re all saying the cost is negligible.
Also, nobody’s even talking about middle and high school, which are much more expensive to operate than MD/CM, and yet have much less potential to recoup cost savings by cutting staff due to the staff being specialized. (this is why it was so slow/complicated for MB to reduce staff) 5 extra kids in a grade at MB/WHS is basically a rounding error, costs almost nothing and compromises the classroom experience not one iota.
Even the title of this letter has errors.
1. The Open Choice program has 30 years of data to support it. The program was introduced in 1996 and has been successful at suburban schools around Bridgeport, New Haven and Hartford. With two additional cities recently added to the program — Norwalk and Danbury — our neighbors in Westport and Weston now participate. Again, more data and more success.
2. The Open Choice program is reimbursed by the state. It adds no incremental cost to Wilton. IF special education is needed by a participating student, it is paid for by the sending school and the state. Even student transportation is covered.
In response to the writer’s $23,000 reference. The ‘per student’ figure in each school district in the U.S. is a simple calculation arrived at by dividing the sum of annual expenditures by the number of pupils enrolled. Most items in a school budget, however, are not affected by minor changes in enrollment as building operations, property maintenance, salaries and benefits and bus services are fixed costs. When a family with ten children moves to Wilton, for instance, they are not suddenly costing Wilton taxpayers an additional $230,000 a year.
Finally, and most important, Open Choice allows five or six incoming students (based on surplus seats) to experience our outstanding schools while providing our own students (and therefore, our community) with a slightly more diverse educational and social experience. That benefits everyone.
To address a misconception from a comment to an earlier letter, the data reflects that Open Choice students have been more studious and have tested higher. Their parents apply because they want to provide opportunities to their children that they perhaps didn’t have themselves, and they are invested in their children’s academic pursuits.
Adopting the Open Choice program models Wilton’s commitment to providing an excellent public education that includes academics, the arts, athletics and social engagement for a diverse student body, one that attempts to offer a wider perspective and resemble the larger world.
Our town’s proclamation states our commitment to inclusion informs our values and is the basis on which our Town will thrive. Diversity enriches us.
Data and facts support the Open Choice program. This is the kind of initiative that great school districts are part of. Our Superintendent is strongly in favor. Wilton should be an Open Choice partner.
The economics of this program are being highly misrepresented in terms of the long-term obligations to Wilton. Put simply, adding just one student from Norwalk to Wilton schools locks us into a $260,000 commitment to pay for that student for the next 12 years!
Simple math: Wilton PPE is $23,000/yr. For each Open Choice student we take, we get $3,000 per year from State, not Norwalk. We obligate ourselves to have that student continue in Wilton Schools from K through grade 12 graduation, or 13 years. Even with zero percent increase in PPE (unrealistically low but makes math easier), the thirteen-year cost to educate a Norwalk student is 13 * $23,000 = $299,000. We get $3,000 per year from State in reimbursement, or $39,000 over the 13 years that a student from Norwalk attends WPS. Incremental cost to Wilton taxpayers = $260,000.
If Wilton BOE decides to pick up five students from Norwalk, the cost the BOE is obligating to the Town of Wilton over their time in WPS is 5 * $260,000 or $1.3 million ! Its not morally acceptable to decide in a few years to terminate a student once he/she has started in the program and send him back to Norwalk, so once he is in, he is in for twelve more years. BOE steps into a quarter million dollar future cost obligation once we accept a student from Norwalk into Kindergarten.
You can literally read the comment immediately above yours for a complete and satisfactory rebuttal to this misconception about per student spending.