The Board of Education gave unanimous approval Thursday night (April 25) to $300,000 in budget reductions that Wilton Schools’ Superintendent Kevin Smith was able to find, per the Board of Finance‘s request.
On April 2 the BOF reduced the proposed 2024-25 school budget from $93,538,159, to $93,238,159, which now represents a 4.5% increase over the current $89.2-million BOE operating budget.
In a short summary Thursday night, Smith reviewed his suggested reductions per an April 5 memo he sent to BOE members. That list featured 12 different items totaling $300,000, including close to $100,000 in additional summer staff time that would primarily center on curriculum development, as well as $80,000 earmarked for overtime primarily for custodial staff, as well as secretarial summer work.
“You’ll see, kind of reading the list, we were able to kind of take small amounts across a wide range of lines. Most of them are not directly impacting students,” Smith said, noting they would have “as minimal an impact as possible” on students and programs.
He said the $96,401 reduction in additional staff time, which represents 25% reduction, is the one “that’s gonna hurt.”
“This additional time line covers primarily the additional summer curriculum days,” he said, with 700 days originally planned for in the proposed budget. Instead, he said, while he will be prioritizing ELA, math and world language curriculum planning over the summer, school leaders will have to determine which areas won’t receive additional curriculum planning time.
“We get requests for curriculum days that span the gamut … Just about every curricular area and department wants a little bit of time,” he said.
“If there are opportunities to re-feed dollars back, this is where I’d do it,” he said, “because we want to provide as much curriculum planning time to as many as possible, because it’s such a dynamic environment.”
Representing a 20% reduction to the overtime budget, the BOE approved Smith’s recommendation of a $79,212 reduction, part of which according to his memo “will come from reducing the number of additional days available for secretarial summer work.”
“Earlier in this year when we had gone into the budget process I had gone in and done a pretty heavy-duty analysis of the way overtime is used,” he said Thursday, “and feel comfortable that we can make this reduction.”
“We’re making a calculated deduction in the overtime line by reducing it by 20%,” he said, “so that’s really mostly going to come from the custodial and maintenance folks … I say calculated risk because we had some issues this year that demanded overtime, so this is going to necessitate Jose [Figueroa, supervisor custodian] and that staff really very closely monitor overtime usage.”
Another $10,000 was saved by deferring a request to expand a special education office position that would have given the role more responsibilities and increasing the salary.
“We’re going to defer that for a year,” Smith said.
A total of $67,387 was reduced in the area of technology, including $40,000 that Smith said can be reduced because E-Rate, the federal internet program for schools and libraries, is now reimbursing offsite server monitoring. The district will also save $10,429 through a contained service agreement that will be in place with the planned purchase of a new firewall, and $16,958 through the discontinued use of a world language software program at Wilton High School.
“The world language teachers at the high school agreed,” he said. “There’s an old software package they use that they don’t need to renew, so we can let that license go.”
“We were able to take another $10,000 from legal fees,” Smith said. “Another 15 [thousand dollars] from our FICA line.”
There will be an additional $10,000 saved in the area of defined benefit because the actuarial adjustment is estimated to be lower than previously budgeted.
Finally, $6,000 was taken each from Cider Mill and Middlebrook Schools‘ club and activities funds.
Smith noted that full funding had been put in for both schools following reductions the previous year, but said the amounts were nominal.
“It’s not perfect, but I think it’s a manageable amount of money,” he said.
“The administrators in both those buildings will just have to go back and look at their club numbers and make some choices about how they manage their reduction,” he said.
BOE Chair Ruth DeLuca described the choices for the reduction as “a testament to how tight we’re running.”
“In this particular tax year, I think that this is an outcome that is manageable,” she said.