1‑Time Grants Rescue Hamden Schools Budget, For Now

Hamden’s Board of Education has passed a $101 million budget to make financial ends meet next school year — while warning of a multimillion-dollar fiscal cliff in their future after being flat-funded by the town council.

The BOE passed the budget at a meeting Wednesday night by a 5 – 3 vote. The $101 million budget includes $91.4 million from the town and and $9.9 million in state and federal support, $3.9 of which is ​“ESSER” (American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) money.

The vote came after a rejection by the mayor and council of the board’s originally funding request from the town. The BOE originally requested about $94 million from the town to cover expenses for the upcoming school year. Mayor Lauren Garrett brought that figure down to $92 million in her proposed town budget before passing the document on to the Legislative Council for edits. The council ultimately decided to save money by level-funding the BOE, finalizing the town’s contributions to the school system at $91.4. Town representatives voted across party lines to limit the board’s budget, with some citing a need to keep taxes as low as possible for residents, additional reps counting on the board getting heightened support from the state this year, and others arguing that the school systems don’t do enough to directly support students to merit more money, pushing instead to reallocate money to community youth services.

The BOE, meanwhile, had to figure out how to cover costs amid inflation, pandemic-imposed achievement gaps, and spikes in contractual costs, including a jump in teachers’ salaries. The result: The board is relying on twice as much grant money as it did last year.

In the 2021 – 2022 school year, the board utilized $5.1 million in grants, including just under $1.5 from their pot of ESSER funding, which is federal aid that was allotted to schools in 2021 to assist with pandemic-related losses. This year, they’re bringing in an extra $4.8 million to make a bigger budget possible.

In all, Hamden schools are spending $3 million more in total on next year’s budget than on last year’s. Read through the final budget here.

“Why kid ourselves and start moving money around? Because we know: We are going to spend this,” the school district’s chief operating officer, Tom Ariola, said Wednesday.

Ariola said one of the most significant costs the district believes it must cover are additional teacher positions, part of an effort to increase individualized learning opportunities as students continue to struggle with the impacts of months of lost learning due to Covid-19. More than $2 million in the budget is invested in teacher positions and special education staff and support. 

A previously negotiated contract with the teachers’ union also means that the district will be upping teachers’ salaries by 9 percent over the next three years. (Read more about that here.) Ariola said transportation costs are going up by $600,000, and are expected to steadily increase each year after that.

School officials had originally intended to use this year’s ESSER money on HVAC and technology investments. They put off those projects to use that federal aid to supplement staff costs in this year’s budget. Ariola said that they will still have to use $2 million of the final remaining $4 million chunk of ESSER funding the following year to pay for those capital initiatives.

After next year, the district will have spent all its one-time ESSER revenue. In other words, the district is set up to fall at least $5 million short in two years without that one-shot federal funding, with the understanding that several expenses are projected to continue to increase significantly down the line.

New Bus Schedule Cuts Losses

Even as the BOE approved an overall budget, some line-by-line specifics remain undecided.

As the board discussed how to cut money from their schools, BOE President Melissa Kaplan asked her colleagues to consider how to do so in a way that ​“causes the least amount of harm.”

One topic of debate that arose Wednesday was transportation. Because ESSER funding is not allowed to be used to cover transportation (they are specifically distributed to address pandemic learning losses), and this year’s state funding has already been accounted for, the board must figure out how to cover a $600,000 jump in busing costs.

Ariola proposed a plan to change arrival and dismissal times across schools in order to avoid cutting bus routes or slashing pick-up stops.

That would mean starting and ending the middle school and elementary schools later, which would widen the gap between school start times, allowing bus drivers more time to get kids to school in a timely manner and reducing the number of buses the district calls in to compensate for delayed drivers. 

That plan passed through the board’s finance committee unanimously last week, with officials calling the idea a ​“win-win.” Buses are always late getting in and out of the middle school, Ariola explained, because the property has poorly designed bus paths which deter drivers from efficiently dropping-off and picking-up students. Therefore, kids are chronically late to elementary schools because drivers are often late after muddling through the middle school mess. With more spacious start and end-time windows, the issue of consistent tardiness should be eliminated. 

And the idea could cut at least $500,000 by lowering the number of additional buses called in each day by 6. (Ariola said he still has to find out how to save an additional $100,000 to budget appropriately for anticipated transportation expenses.)

The plan would also sync elementary school start and end times, allowing for easier scheduling of professional development opportunities. (Read about the concept in more depth here.) Ariola said the specific times determined as arrival and dismissal for the high school, middle school and elementary schools will continue to be fine-tuned before those changes are officially communicated to families.

However, the busing change would also mean that all elementary schools would start at 9 a.m., rather than 8:15 and 8:45, a possible disruption to parents’ work schedules.

Mother Betsy Kearney D’Amico expressed frustration with the change on Wednesday.

“I was floored to hear this decision was being wrapped up in a financial decision,” D’Amico said. ​“I am not going to buy this plan Most of the schedule impacts are going to fall on the mothers and women of the family. There was not one female voice in that finance meeting.”

She pointed to the board’s blaming of the council for lack of funding. ​“If you need the parents out there to raise our voices” at council meetings, she said, ​“then tell us, because I have no damn problem doing that.”

“But don’t fix our budget holes by screwing around everybody’s schedules,” she instructed.

The board ultimately did pass the schedule changes as part of the budget, arguing that the biggest concern when it comes to equity is making sure that all students have equal access to public transportation to school.

“I know it’s not an easy decision, but here’s where we are,” Melillo said. ​“If we have to go back and cut five more buses, we’re gonna create more inequities among our children.”

Kaplan also noted that others have argued that if school times are to change, high schoolers should start their days later than elementary school students. High schoolers currently begin class at 7:30. Kaplan referenced research asserting that teenagers require more rest than young children — but said she ultimately supports keeping the high school arrival and dismissal times early because many families depend on their teens working after-school jobs to support their households. 

“No matter what we do or decide, we will have consequences that should have been avoidable,” she said. ​“That’s why it’s so important to go to the council to advocate for our school budget.”

While the board agreed on the decision to change school schedules, they voiced different opinions when it came to one $75,000 line.

The finance committee had unanimously decided to spend that money on reinstating a gifted and talented program (TAG) in the district’s elementary schools that had been dissolved back in 2020. The money was previously put towards funding a supervisor for the schools’ HVAC systems.

Kaplan described TAG as an exclusionary practice that perpetuates ​“institutionalized discrimination.”

“At the elementary level, all students are gifted and talented, though not all students present that in the same way,” she said. ​“The question should be how to incorporate all students into enrichment programs.”

She also pointed out that the board had yet to design a curriculum or hire staff for said program, and that ​“earmarking money for a program that hasn’t even been created… is something we need to be very mindful of.”

Other board members, like Gary Walsh and Austin Cesare, argued in favor of reinstituting TAG.

“We gotta make programming that serves all students,” Cesare said.

“I’m not afraid to revisit a decision,” said Walter Morton, a BOE member who voted to cut the program two years ago. 

The board voted to label the $75,000 as ​“miscellaneous” and take another vote on how to make best use of the money next month.

"We're Not Fine"

As board members reviewed their amended budget Wednesday, they criticized and lamented the council’s decision to level-fund them by $600,000, describing the Legislative Council as out of touch with and dismissive of the financial realities facing the school district.

“The way I see it, they just don’t care,” BOE member David Asberry said of the council.

“One council member said, ​‘We’ll be fine.’ We’re not fine. We’re not fine,” he asserted.

“The reality of the situation is we have a fiscal gap that we have to close now,” Assistant Superintendent Chris Melillo, who is leaving Hamden next year to take a new position as superintendent of Newtown’s schools, said in agreement with Asberry.

“When we presented our budget to the council, we held a three-hour meeting,” he recalled. Melillo fielded questions about ​“after-school activities, social emotional support, how we’re closing our carbon footprint, and security.”

“They wanted to know about all of the ​‘extras’ that we give our children,” Melillo stated. ​“But when you flat-fund us and you have 8.5 percent inflation, you’re basically cutting us.”

“The same people who wanna talk about supporting our teachers — teachers are the first to go,” he asserted. ​“After-school activities, sports, you talk about trying to preserve the core — the insular pieces are the first to go.”

“You can’t keep coming at us and saying we want after-school activities, we want supplies for our teachers, we want extracurriculars… everyone wants, but eventually something has to give.”

“We are now taking what money we have and talking about how we can keep teachers that we desperately need to support our students,” Melillo said.

“But I’m just gonna put this out here: The last three years this school district fed this community. I personally felt it was a slap in the face for the work we’ve done, the work we’ve done to support our families,” he said of the flat-funding. 

“And you’re right, Dr. Asberry,” he added. ​“I don’t see a council member in this room. And I don’t see them in finance meetings.” (Councilmember Katie Kiely, a school teacher at Ridge Hill Elementary, was the only council member who did show up to Wednesday’s meeting.)

Melillo concluded his last BOE meeting in Hamden: ​“From where I sit right now, I’ve got nothing to lose.”

“If you know you’re gonna give us a zero, don’t waste my time for three hours, don’t ask questions and please don’t tell us you’re gonna give us a list of questions so we can consider giving you more money. We never got any questions. So, this is where we are. This is the outcome.”