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Politics & Government

Tolland School Board Sees Town Manager's Budget Cut as Too Deep

School board Chairman Robert Pagoni is working on letter to the town council that will outline his board's concerns about the proposed $1.38 million cut in the school board's budget request for the 2011-2012 school year.

Saying that Town Manager Steven Werbner’s proposed $1.38 million cut in the school budget for next year goes too far, members of the board of education Wednesday night agreed to outline their objections to it in a letter to Werbner and the town council.

The letter, which board Chairman Robert Pagoni agreed to write, grew out of board member Diane Clokey’s suggestion that the school board as a whole respond to Werbner’s recommendation before the March 29 public hearing on the school budget.

“This is an impossible thing to do,” Clokey said of the spending cuts that the school board would have to make if Werbner’s budget recommendations were adopted.

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Werbner is recommending, in part, that the school board’s teachers and administrators switch to a high-deductible, health savings account insurance plan similar to the one offered to town hall employees as a way of reducing costs. More than half of the school board’s proposed $2.21 million spending increase for next year was the result of higher insurance costs.

Werbner is proposing a 2.45 percent increase in local education spending for the fiscal year that begins July 1. The $828,896 increase would bring total school spending to $34,637,431.

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While state law gives local and regional boards of education authority over the operations of each school district, funding of those operations are primarily from municipal appropriations approved by a board of selectmen or town council. School boards cannot legally spend money in excess of what’s been authorized by the municipality.

Webner’s suggestion that the school board could save roughly $1.2 million by switching to a high-deductible health savings account insurance program is just that, a suggestion. What benefits the school district offers its employees is a decision that ultimately belongs to the school board. But the board can’t offer what it cannot afford.

In February, the school board adopted School Supt. William D. Guzman’s $36.02 million budget proposal and recommended it to town council for adoption. That proposal would have increased education spending by 6.53 percent over current spending, which Werbner has said was unrealistically high in light of the current economic downturn.

Board member Judy Grabowicz, citing a 2010 report by the Yankee Institute for Public Policy, said that of all the towns and regional school districts in Connecticut, Tolland is second from the last in terms of spending on public education through Grade 12.

The institute, however, a nonpartisan educational and research organization that promotes “economic opportunity through lower taxes and new ideas for better government in Connecticut” doesn’t see Tolland’s relatively low spending for local education as necessarily bad.

Using information collected by the state department of education, the institute calculated the total cost per district of a K through Grade 12 education. The statewide average, according to the institute’s study released in June of 2010, was $133,074. The highest cost, $199,212, was in Hartford amd the lowest was in Watertown, $106,303.

Tolland was the second lowest at $107,552.

The institute referred to the five districts with the lowest costs as “the most efficient school districts” in Connecticut.

Pagoni said he has talked with Werbner about the potential savings in health insurance costs through health savings accounts and the difficulties involved in getting employees to switch from their current health insurance plan to a health savings account.

“We can only put it out as an option,” board member Steve Clark said. Taking away the current health insurance program and offer only a the health savings accounts would quickly end up in arbitration, Clark cautioned.

Board member Robert Powell said Werbner’s assessment of the savings that could be realized by switching everyone to a HSA plan cannot be reached because employees may opt to keep their present insurance and not choose the health savings plan option.

“That silver bullet is not a solution,” Powell said of Werbner’s HSA proposal.

If Werbner’s spending reduction didn’t come from savings on insurance, it would have to be found elsewhere in the budget.

“It would be coming right out of our hides,” Pagoni said.

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