Stratford superintendent calls town hall-style meeting on budget

STRATFORD — Superintendent Uyi Osunde has his work cut out for him.

Osunde is planning a public, town hall-style meeting with various education stakeholders Wednesday to unveil his plan to close a $2 million gap between the Board of Education’s 2022-23 budget request and the $123.2 million allocation it received from the town council.

The council budget represents a 2.5 percent increase from the current year, but the school board had sought a 4.57 percent increase.

“I intend to provide an overview of our data, respond to prevailing questions respective to the budget, and briefly touch on some of our strategic priorities moving into the next academic year,” Osunde said in a letter announcing the Wednesday meeting, scheduled for 6 p.m. at town hall.

Osunde will be joined by school board chair Andrea Corcoran and other members of the superintendent’s cabinet, Osunde said.

Corcoran declined to comment in advance of Wednesday’s meeting.

Now that the town budget has been finalized, the school board must pass a new budget with the town’s appropriation. This will be the final step in the town’s budget process and will require the board to identify areas of potential savings..

Osunde said he will make his recommendations for adjustments to the budget “in the coming days,” according to the letter. He has previously said the district could consider “signficant reduction measures,” including the possible closure of a school. There are currently 13 schools in the district, including two high schools, two middle schools and nine elementary schools.

Teachers, students and parents rallied outside of Town Hall ahead of last Monday’s Council meeting in response to the budget allocation. A number of the attendees spoke in the public comment portion of the council meeting, with a majority expressing support for a fully funded school budget.

Stratford is estimated to be receiving around $1.1 million in Alliance funding from the state, the Department of Education confirmed. The final number will not be calculated until sometime in late-July usually, the state DOE said. This designation is linked to being among the 30 lowest performing districts in the state in accordance with pre-pandemic statistics.

The state legislature also passed an amendment to state budget exempting the town from meeting its minimum budget requirement for this upcoming year. This is the state requirement preventing a muncipality from budget less for its school system than it did in the year prior.

“The unique and (rare) exemption provided to the town for (minimum budget requirement), sets a statewide precedent and its impact on our alliance funding adds another layer of complexity for resource acquisition and resource planning for the district,” Osunde wrote in a statement to Hearst Connecticut Media following the passage of the budget on May 11.

The town budget process began in February with the passage of the school budget. Then Mayor Laura Hoydick proposed her budget, slotting the schools at $123.2 million, or an increase of 2.5 percent, in March.