Allan Appel Photo
Birks at first Finance meeting.
On the evening of her first day on the job, new city schools Superintendent Carol Birks got a long earful about deficits, the budgeting process, and whether money might be saved in transportation costs if high schoolers took public transit and routes were reconfigured.
She got that earful late Monday afternoon at the regular meeting of the Board of Education’s Finance & Operations Committee meeting on the second floor of Board of Ed headquarters on Meadow Street. The once sleepy gatherings of this group have become flash points for controversy over Board of Ed contracting and spending.
After-School, Social-Emotional Funding OK’d
Board members Frank Redente and Darnell Goldson, and COO Will Clark huddle .
Before diving into the arcana of the approximately $25 million annual school transportation costs and how routes are configured, the committee, comprised of Tamiko Jackson-McArthur, Frank Redente, and Chairman Jamell Cotto, approved 13 items — contract extensions, a new contract, technical amendments to existing contracts.
The approved contracts included:
• $12,500 in continuing support of various after-school programs at High School in the Community and East Rock Magnet School.
• $12,500 for the Clifford Beers Clinic to continue providing care coordination to help kids and parents meet emotional challenges and crises at Lincoln Bassett School
• $140,00 over five years for after-school enrichment programs at Bishop Woods and Davis Magnet Schools.
• $30,000 for social, emotional, and leadership training skills at Barnard Magnet School.
• $55,000 to the Elizabeth Celotto Child Care Center located at Wilbur Cross High School, where high school kids who are parents leave off their little ones before heading to class.
• Three grants, totaling $238,500, to support the school system’s databases and integration software.
In addition, the committee approved three technical/clerical contract changes, two to change funding sources of ongoing programs and one to substitute the name of the new superintendent as the newly authorized person to sign off on the reimbursement forms for child nutrition costs at the schools.
All of the items were approved unanimously and now go to the full Board of Education for final approval at the regular meeting scheduled for next Monday.
Bus Talk
Cotto and Redente.
When Will Clark, the district’s chief operating officer, informed the committee that he is readying the bid for the system’s approximately $25 million transportation contract to go out, the committee conversation livened up.
“I’ve been researching small cities,” said board member Jamell Cotto, who has been leading the charge for officials to look everywhere possible in the bidding process to lower costs as the board faces a $7 million deficit for the soon-to-end current fiscal year alone.
“High school kids don’t like to take the bus,” Cotto averred. His inquiry was a challenge to Clark to talk with CT Transit about arranging bus passes at a reduced rate for high school kids so the school system can pay for fewer of its own buses.
“Have we thought about this? What would be the savings?” Cotto asked.
“I’m not sure there would be any savings,” Clark replied.
“We have a three-tiered system,” Clark explained, meaning the system provides transportation for kids going to regular schools; the special ed kids; and then others, including those who travel into, for example, the magnet schools from the suburbs.
First Student Inc, which has the current contract, is the major supplier of transport for the schools and is nearing the end of at least its second five-year contract, Clark said,
“We pay for the bus for the day,” Clark added. Even if high school kids weren’t picked up, or fewer of them, “we still use that bus,” he explained.
Although not a committee member himself, Board of Education Chairman Darnell Goldson was in attendance and pursued Cotto’s line of questioning with Clark. He asked how other towns similar in size to New Haven do school transportation. Might some of those be a model for how it can be done more economically? he asked. And he asked how many New Haven high schoolers take the bus.
Clark went to his phone and came up with the answer: 4,883 total high school kids signed up for the bus, Clark reported. Of those 750 hail from the suburbs, he added.
With those numbers, Goldson asked why money could not be saved, especially if Clark could negotiate a reduced price from CT Transit for high school kids.
Clark responded that given the way the system is structured and the complexity of the routes, “When you cut it for high school, you have to cut it from the others too.”
Goldson and Cotto were not convinced. Goldson asked for a Finance & Operations Committee member to be permitted to work with the Board of Ed staffers who structure the bid so the issue of high school kids, among other savings, would be engaged before the bid goes out.
Cotto and other committee members were taken aback when Clark further explained that First Student has an option to renew and has made clear it will not renew at a lesser price. “Negotiating a reduction to the renewal is not an option,” Clark said. That is why the school system is going out to bid.
Superintendent Birks, board member Jackson-McArthur.
Goldson suggested Clark adjust the scope and configuration of the complex transportation system.
Clark was agreeable but issued a caution: “The cost all hinges on routes and hours.”
Superintendent Birks endorsed Goldson’s and Cotto’s approach in asking for Clark to produce the materials they were calling for.
“I’d like to see some research on sister cities and [the results of your] talk to CT Transit and explore other vendors,” she said.
Clark made a list of the additional information he had been tasked to provide to the committee, and Birks endorsed that the work between staff and the committee should be more collaborative.
“I agree with you,” she said to Goldson. “I think we need to look at our efficiencies.”