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After passing a budget that many members lauded for making real monetary steps on equity-related initiatives, the Hamden Board of Education is now facing cuts that may require it to put those treasured initiatives, still in their infancy, on the chopping block.
On May 16, the town’s Legislative Council voted during a six-hour budget deliberation meeting to flat-fund the BOE at the current year’s budget total. It also voted to count $700,000 of education grants as revenue for the town.
The board had passed a budget of about $91.5 million at the end of February.
Between the flat-funding and the grant revenue that will not go to the board, the town’s school district must now find a way to cut $2.8 million out of the next fiscal year’s operating budget.
The board met late Tuesday evening over the Zoom teleconferencing app to hear the administration’s proposal for where to cut. A rather tired-looking Superintendent Jody Goeler read aloud each line he proposed the board slash. He said what the consequences of the cut would be.
Many of the cuts would gut programs Goeler himself had championed in his proposed budget, saying at the time that he was excited about the change they would bring about in the district.
“None of them are good,” said Goeler as he launched into the list of cuts.
The board did not take any votes Tuesday evening. Board members gave the administration feedback about what they are and are not willing to cut and where the administration should keep looking for money. Many also admonished the Legislative Council for having made the town’s school system bear the burden of the town’s financial troubles.
The board will meet again next week to vote on the cuts.
The cuts would take $200,000 out of the $250,000 curriculum development line. Goeler had added an additional $200,000 to the budget start rewriting the district’s curriculum to make it more culturally inclusive.
The cuts would gut the $125,000 Goeler had proposed to smooth over inequities between the district’s various Parent-Teacher Associations. They would cut $130,000 from the professional development line, which Goeler had increased in the budget to add equity- and diversity-related professional development days.
The cuts would eliminate two beloved programs in the district. Eliminating the Navigator Program at Hamden Middle School would save the board $110,000. The Navigator Program provides a hands-on classroom environment for eight graders who struggle with traditional educational formats.
The proposed cuts would also eliminate the Talented and Gifted (TAG) Program, which brings high-performing elementary school students across the district together one day a week. A few parents of students in the program had submitted letters of public comment before the meeting begging the board not to end the program and praising Grace Guidet, the teacher who runs it.
The cuts would eliminate the middle school theater program, after-school sports at the middle school, and freshman sports at the high school, altogether saving $200,000.
The cuts would eliminate the reintroduction of a family resource center at Ridge Hill Elementary School, which used to exist until the state pulled funding for it a few years ago. The proposed cuts would also eliminate funding for summer programming that was supposed to help close the achievement gap.
The cuts would also mean layoffs across the district. That would include teachers in the Navigator and TAG programs, eight specialists who work with students who need extra support, two high school teachers, a few administrative positions, a few support positions, and about $196,000 worth of other unspecified districtwide positions.
“Although this is a budget that we are presenting, it’s very hard for me to support it,” Assistant Superintendent Chris Melillo said after Goeler had read through the list. “But I don’t know any other ways to find $2.8 million in a budget and cut it.”
“I am angry and upset, and I know that you are too,” he said, referring to the council’s decision to flat-fund the board.
The council is still in budget deliberations, and could still increase the board’s budget allotment before it passes its final budget. Board members urged the 102 people who were watching the meeting to contact their council representatives and urge them to give the board more money.
“Two Steps Back”
Sam Gurwitt Photo
Board Chair Arturo Perez-Cabello and Roxana Walker-Canton in January.
Board members said they would be loath to make the proposed cuts, though they acknowledged that they may not have a choice.
“I feel like we took a big step forward, now we have to take two steps back,” said Finance Committee Chair Walter Morton. He said he could not support cutting the district’s equity initiatives. The board had worked hard to include that funding in its budget, he said, adding that it’s frustrating that it may now be the first thing to go when cuts are needed.
Parents and students in Hamden have made the case loud and clear to the board that it needs to diversify its curriculum and hire more teachers of color. Parents packed a board meeting in January making those demands after a teacher at the West Woods Elementary School planned to have her students act out a play about slavery. Parents had made similar demands at a board meeting a year before.
Roxana Walker-Canton said she also could not support gutting the proposed equity initiatives, or laying people off. She asked whether it would be possible to reduce funding for programs like Navigator and TAG without eliminating them altogether. She also suggested that the people at the top the ladder, like central office administrators and principals, take pay cuts. She suggested a few other small lines that might be cut.
Other board members said the board should seek concessions from unions. Personnel Director Gary Highsmith said he would reach out to the board’s seven unions to open negotiations for givebacks, which he said he could only do after being directed to by the board.
The administrators’ union, he said, had already contacted him of its own volition asking how it could help.
Negotiating concessions packages from unions, however, will take a long time, and the board must pass its cuts before the council passes its amended budget, which it must do before June 5.
Even if the board is able to find other ways of cutting from its budget, staff may still have to go. “$2.8 million means reductions in staff. There’s just no other way around it,” said Goeler at the end of the meeting, after hearing the suggestions of the board.
The board will meet again next week to vote on cuts. Until then, the district’s administration will be back at the drawing board, with the help of the board’s finance committee.