Melissa Bailey Photo
The newly “transparent” school board approved a $324 million spending plan three days after seeing the proposal for the first time, and before the public even got a hint of what’s in it.
By a unanimous vote Monday night, the Board of Education approved its budget for the 2010-11 fiscal year, which starts on July 1. The proposal now passes to the Board of Aldermen for a final vote. The aldermen cannot tinker with line items the way they can with other city departments.
School board members approved the plan after a presentation by Will Clark (pictured above), the school district’s chief operating officer, at the board’s full meeting. The budget determines which schools will be rebuilt, how many textbooks bought, and how many teachers will fill classrooms in September.
The proposal includes a $176.0 million “operating budget” for the city schools. That represents an increase of $3.0 million, or 1.7 percent over the current year. (Click here to see that portion of the spending plan.)
Other costs not included in that figure: $80.2 million in school-related employment benefits and debt service; $4.9 million on capital projects and $62.5 million in other costs paid for by special funds. The total education package tallies to $323.6 million.
Schools Superintendent Reggie Mayo said he will need to trim in some places to keep the budget that size, but “we are going to stay away from the classroom. We are going to try not to lay off people.”
The budget vote came two weeks after Mayor John DeStefano urged the school board to be “transparent” in decision-making, so that the public finds school reform plans credible.
The proposed budget was slipped onto Monday’s school board agenda at the last minute with no prior public hearing.
Asked about that, DeStefano said Monday the budgeting process was transparent enough.
Standing at a podium facing the horseshoe of school board members, Clark made his case for why the schools budget needs an extra boost.
Clark reminded the board that in 2009, he stood before them and asked for a $5 million increase over the $173 million budget the mayor had proposed. The school board approved the request, but the Board of Aldermen rejected it, sending the school board back to find $5 million in cuts.
The school district is still digging out of that deficit, Clark said: “We’re still two to three million in the hole.”
This year, Clark is making a more modest request, a $3 million increase. He noted that two-thirds of the proposed hike would go to pay raises for teachers.
“The teachers really drive the bus. As teachers go, the budget goes,” Clark said.
Clark and the teachers union agreed to cut about 15 teaching positions next year, according to teachers union President Dave Cicarella. No one would lose jobs because the cuts would be easily absorbed by attrition, Cicarella said. Each year, at least 40 of the district’s 1,700 teachers retire, he said.
The job cuts would save the district $1 million, Clark said.
The district is currently negotiating with all the other education-related labor unions, including custodians, Clark said. He said he’s asking unions to follow in the footsteps of the 12-person trades union, which agreed to freeze wages and switch medical costs in its latest contract.
“We’re expecting to see concessions,” Clark said. If not, the district would move forward with “targeted privatization or reductions.”
The plan calls for spending $145.7 million for school construction projects. That includes rebuilding four schools: Helene Grant, Micro Society, New Haven Academy and Hyde Leadership. The state would pay the lion’s share, $127.0 million. The city would pay $18.7 million.
Alex Johnston, an education watchdog who recently joined the board, asked about the revenue side of the budget, which isn’t detailed in the spending plan.
DeStefano replied that the schools expect to see a $400,000 drop in state funding, due to a reduction in transportation aid, judging by Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s State of the State speech last week. The largest state grant, Education Cost Sharing, will stay even, DeStefano said. That means total state aid for education would drop from $149.2 million to $148.8 million.
“Community Discussion” & The Budget
Monday’s approval came on short notice. Johnston said he took his first look at the budget on Saturday, two days before the vote. The budget proposals were hand-delivered to board members over the weekend, he said.
Members of the public weren’t so lucky. The Administration/Finance Committee did not hold a public hearing on the matter, according to Clark. Clark said he showed the spending plan to two members of the board, Liz Torres and Ferdinand Risco, in a private meeting.
News of the upcoming budget vote was not made public until 4:44 p.m. Friday, when the agenda for Monday’s meeting was emailed out — just under the wire for state Freedom of Information Act requirements. The agenda included this description: “2010 – 2011 Budget Request — Approval.”
Board members discussed the matter for less than 40 minutes Monday before approving the plan by an 8 – 0 vote. Only one member of the public spoke at the meeting. She did not address the budget, except in passing.
Most of the discussion among the board surrounded what to do in future budgeting years.
Mayor DeStefano (pictured) said starting with fiscal year 2011-12, he’d like to see the district shift to a school-based budgeting system, where each school’s budget, including supplies, utilities and staffing, are listed separately. He said that would match the school’s reform plans, which aim to shift from a top-down management system to one that’s decentralized.
“If we’re encouraging accountability by school,” he reckoned, the board “should be budgeting by school.” Once the spending is listed school by school, that may spark lively discussion about allocation of resources, DeStefano said. He said he’d welcome the debate.
Johnston said he’d seen that type of budgeting done in Hartford. He agreed it brings more transparency.
“It creates more community discussion around the budget,” he said. When the budgets are broken down by school, it “does illustrate that some schools are benefiting from extra revenue,” which can cause a vigorous debate, he said.
During the discussion, no one addressed the lack of a public discussion surrounding the budget proposal introduced and approved on Monday.
Clark said the procedure — a private workshop by members of the Administration/Finance (A/F) Committee, followed by a full board vote — was standard practice.
He was asked after the meeting if the process is “transparent.”
“It’s as transparent as any other process, I suppose,” Clark said. He said the Board of Education is “just one department of many” that will be submitting requests to the mayor before he makes his budget proposal to the Board of Aldermen.
“Our approval here is just a referral [to the mayor] anyway,” Clark said.
The mayor agreed. “This is a budget development process internal to the agency, just like the [departments of] public works, parks, library does theirs,” he said. “Many of them have boards, too. Some of them look at their budgets. Some of them don’t.”
However, the Board of Ed budget works differently from other city department budgets. Unlike with city departments, aldermen don’t have line-by-line discretion over the school board budget. They can only vote up or down on the total budget amount.
Noting that education costs make up over half the city budget, one blue ribbon group last year called for aldermen to take a stepped-up role in scrutinizing education spending.
Does the mayor feel this year’s school budgeting process needs more transparency?
He indicated not.
The school board budget gets adopted at the Board of Aldermen, the mayor replied.
“Could there have been a public hearing process here, too? I suppose there could be,” the mayor said. “I suppose I could hold a public hearing process before I submit my budget, quite honestly, if you really think about it.”
“I think this is obviously a public process right here,” added Clark. “Anyone can come.”
Clark said at the A/F committee’s public meetings, “everything is transparent.” “Every contract is part of the damn agenda, for God’s sake.”
Reached after the meeting, Johnston said as a new board member, he doesn’t have a point of reference to say whether the budgeting process is transparent.
“I really don’t know how this budget has worked in the past,” Johnston said, but he welcomed the mayor’s suggestion of shifting to school-based budgeting in the future. “There are some other ways that you could structure the budgeting process that would create the opportunity for engagement for a wide variety of folks.”