Tolland School Board Looks To Make More Cuts In Next Year's Education Budget

Although a third vote by taxpayers on next year’s town and school budget won’t come until Tuesday, members of the school board already know more cuts are needed to meet the town council’s proposed education budget of $34.66 million.

At Wednesday night’s board meeting, Superintendent of Schools William Guzman outlined roughly $941,000 in spending reductions he’s made thus far in the school board’s original $36.02 million education budget for fiscal 2012, and he has another $413,000 to go.

The education budget proposed by Guzman in February contained $2.2 million in new spending over the current year’s budget. After each no vote by taxpayers on the overall town budget, the town council reduced the town and school board’s bottom line in hopes of winning voter approval.

The town council’s third revision of next year’s municipal budget to be voted on Tuesday is $50,427,662 and breaks down as follows: town government, $10,766,199; education, 34,662,357; debt service, 4,751,796 and capital projects, 247,310. If approved, the budget will raise spending next year by 2.25 percent and local property taxes by 1.99 percent.

Thus far, Guzman has been nipping away at the spending increases. The anticipated increase of $1.22 million in medical insurance benefits is now down to $435,769. There is also a $95,060 reduction in post employment benefits and a $91,883 adjustment for a transportation grant for special services.

With $413,058 in cuts still to come, provided the budget is approved on Tuesday and the town council doesn’t have to cut the budget further, Guzman anticipates having to cut further from proposed increases which include $172,564 in athletic programs and personnel and $143,274 in programs, facilities and support services.

The deeper the cuts, the more difficult the decisions about what should go are becoming, school officials said.

As board members looked at the figures that Guzman presented Wednesday night, they also saw what those numbers represent in terms of educating the town’s children.

Board member Judy Grabowicz, chairman of the board’s finance and facilities committee, reluctantly recommended the board cut all of the proposed $172,564 increase in spending on athletics personnel and programs, noting that the school district has other needs that take priority.

She urged every board member to examine the budget and look for possible savings and not just leave it up to the superintendent and the finance committee.

“This is a board of education budget,” Grabowicz said. “It won’t be made by two people.”

“Everything is on the table,” board member Edward Clark said, not just the proposed spending increases that Guzman had outlined.

Anticipating the protracted discussion that would ensue if board members delved into the budget book looking for cuts, Guzman said he would prepare a list of recommended adjustments to the budget.

Guzman said the board has until June 30 to finalize the shape of next year’s budget as long as it doesn’t exceed the amount that is approved by voters. He said he wants to wait until he has a better idea of “where we are this year” in terms of spending before settling on a budget for next year.

Board member Andy Powell, also a member of the finance committee, agreed that athletics “need to be pared back” and that any funding for extra-curricular activities should be cut.

The board’s discussion served as real-life civics lesson for two members of the senior class of Tolland High School, Dominic Tursi and Nick DeCrosta, who attended the meeting as part of a school assignment and quickly came to realize that their favorite extra curricular activity, music and the arts, was also in the budget cross hairs.

In addressing the board, both urged that more attention and money should be focused on the arts.

“Nothing is heard about the arts,” said Tursi who will be attending The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. “We don’t have books for music classes” at the high school.

“It gives everybody an outlet,” DeCrosta said of music and the arts that serve to capture the creative urges of many who might otherwise be tempted by drugs or alcohol.

“The arts have done a lot for me,” DeCrosta said. “I hope that it continues.”