Schools Project $30M Shortfall

School brass is relying on state reps to lift them one-third of the way out of a $31 million hole in next year’s budget — which will already require deep staff cuts.

Superintendent Carol Birks made that announcement Monday night in a surprise budget presentation that wasn’t noticed on the Board of Education’s meeting agenda.

This school year, the district is projecting it will already go $8.94 million over budget. Next year, even with no new programs, expenses are projected to rise an additional $21.75 million.

That will leave the district with a massive $30.69 million problem.

Birks said, in a presentation at the school board’s regular meeting at Celentano School, that she has an initial plan to come up with $20.40 million in savings, but she’s hoping that the state will come through with the other $10.28 million she’ll need to stay in the black.

Darnell Goldson, the board’s president, said the city should be asked to contribute additional dollars too. Birks said she wanted to focus on galvanizing the community to lobby for more funding from the legislature.

If they don’t come through with new revenue, the size of the cuts will be unprecedented. The shortfall, which represents about 14 percent of the projected spending, would deepen cuts that have already shuttered schools and darkened libraries, strained counselors and pared back instructional supports.

Next Monday, Feb. 18, administrators will share more details with the Finance & Operations Committee about their projected expenditures and suggested budget remediation. Then, a week later, on Feb. 25, the full board will vote on a budget request to send to the mayor.

After that, it will continue figuring out how to close the gaps until school lets out for summer.

Mayor Toni Harp stayed quiet throughout Birks’s budget presentation, and she left the meeting immediately after.

Goldson: We’re With You

Goldson said he’ll lobby hard for a spending increase, as long as the city was asked too.

“You’re going to get our support,” he told Birks. ​“It’s just a matter of whether they listen.”

Goldson added that he doesn’t even want to think what $30 million in cuts would look like.

According to the preliminary numbers Birks presented on Monday night, the school system is looking at $217 million in expenses next year.

The biggest chunk of that — more than 60 percent — would go to salaries for full-time employees, like principals, teachers and aides.

Those personnel costs are also driving most of next year’s shortfall. Employees receive a contractually guaranteed raise of around 3 percent each year. The expiration of grants has moved more employees onto the general fund budget. And the city plans to start billing for costs it used to cover in-kind.

Meanwhile, the funding hasn’t kept track, said Assistant Superintendent Keisha Redd-Hannans.

The alders rejected Mayor Harp’s request for a $5 million increase in school spending. And while the state’s Education Cost Sharing formula, which attempts to make up the difference between the cost of running a school district and local governments’ ability to pay, has increased funding, it’s appeared as a flat-funded amount in the general fund for eight years straight, due to the way that New Haven budgets.

That’s because increases are coming through a related funding stream just for Alliance Districts, the state’s 33 lowest-performing districts. Through that supplement to the Education Cost Sharing formula, the district’s share of funds has increased by roughly $12 million over those eight years. But the increase won’t show up on budget documents, because the city’s accountants consider Alliance money a special fund that comes with too many strings attached to put in the general fund.

“It’s a very strange way Connecticut allocates the funding and can certainly cause confusion,” said Michael Morton, the communications director at the Connecticut School Finance Project. ​“The ECS Alliance District portion is where all increases since 2012 and all future increases in ECS funding will occur, so it’s definitely an area parents and community members should pay attention to.”

“Right-Sizing” Faculty & Staff

Birks said that she’ll try to make up most of the gap by moving as many employees as possible into grant-funded positions. She estimates that the district can free up $9.5 million from the general fund with that accounting maneuver.

Birks said she’ll also try ​“right-sizing” the faculty and staff with a ​“district-wide staffing model” that could reduce the total number of positions. She estimated that could save $5.4 million.

For comparison, over the summer, the district said it saved $10.9 million by eliminating 130 positions. At that rate, the district would need to come up with about 65 more positions next year that could go unfilled.

“Just like last year, we were able to look at the talent throughout the district and reassign people,” Birks said. ​“So we’re very hopeful that, working with the teachers union, we can think about how to reduce those positions without losing the staff by reassigning them to existing vacancies or through attrition.”

Birks said she’ll also try to consolidate programs, end leases, renegotiate contracts and reroute buses. Together, she estimated those operational efficiencies could save another $5.5 million.

She added that she hopes she can avoid another round of school closures. ​“It is not my vision to close schools,” she said. ​“But we have to look at every program, every lease that we have to see if we can make some consolidations.”

Birks said that her goal is to present a ​“balanced budget” before the fiscal year begins. She said that she wants it to establish equity across schools, prioritize direct classroom instruction, and implement both a comprehensive reading program and social-emotional learning framework.