New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
New Haven school district seeks $4.4M budget increase
NEW HAVEN — Growing up on the island nation of Jamaica, New Haven Superintendent of Schools Iline Tracey said she was used to hearing a phrase: “Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.”
She said the same thing applies
now to money in New Haven’s schools.
The district is expecting federal aid money — roughly $135 million it is projected to receive, with the last $90 million of it to be spent by September 2024 — but school officials still worry about covering the costs of day-to-day operations.
In the current fiscal year, the city contributed $189.2 million to the school system as part of its $358.8 million budget. Mayor Justin Elicker has offered two visions for a city budget this year is his annual budget proposal — one that projects a $66 million deficit and another, more optimistic version that assumes the city will receive a multimillion-dollar contribution from Yale University. In the first version of that budget, Elicker proposed keeping the city’s contribution to the school board the same. In the more optimistic version, he suggested a $3 million increase to the schools.
School district officials said they want a $4.4 million budget increase from the city this year.
New Haven Public Schools Chief Financial Officer Phil Penn told an aldermanic budget committee that to continue operating the schools without making any cuts to programs or services, it would require an additional $8.8 million from the city — a 4.65 percent increase in funding.
However, Penn said the district could halve that need by applying federal aid funds toward operational costs.
This year, the district was saved from a projected shortfall by saving about $4.5 million when the teachers union agreed to a one-year wage freeze, district leaders said.
“We can’t repeat teachers forgoing raises next year,” Penn said.
To make budgeting matters stickier, not only are teachers and other educators guaranteed wage increases next year, the union also negotiated a three-year no-layoff clause as part of the agreement, so leaders cannot shrink the size of the district’s workforce.
Penn said the decision to close two schools with outdated infrastructure does not net the district a tremendous amount of savings — about $1.04 million — and the savings already are factored into Penn’s “status quo” projection.
Alder Adam Marchand, D-25, noted that if the district was asking for an increase of $4.4 million, it’s only $1.4 million more than what Elicker had proposed as an increase.
“What difference would the $1.4 million make?” he asked.
Tracey said the district is wary of falling off a “TIF cliff,” referencing the school district’s previous mismanagement of a federal Teacher Incentive Fund grant. Under that grant, school officials hired teachers and began paying their salaries with non-grant funds; when the grant funding ran out, district leaders found they had expenses far greater than what they could afford.
One major way that the federal grant funding differs from most other grants, Penn said, is that the third round of federal aid funding for COVID-19 academic recovery — an estimated $90 million grant that the district will apply for when the application process opens — can be used for operational costs. Most federal grants, he said, have stipulations that they cannot be used to supplant operational costs.
To prevent from repeating past mistakes, Tracey said the messaging to any new hires will be clear: once the grant funding runs out, so, too, do their positions.
Alder Jeanette Morrison, D-22, said she knows that New Haven has made an effort to keep grant-funded positions in schools for longer than what the district can afford.
“When the well got dry, the well got real dry,” she said.
She suggested the district look into strengthening and increasing its community partnerships as a means of budget mitigation and sustainability.
So far this year, the district has spent over onehalf of its allocated federal aid grant money on improving technology infrastructure, ensuring that students and teachers are able to access school remotely. Penn said he hopes more funding can be used for infrastructure upgrades, to prevent a repeat of the circumstances that led the district to close
West Rock STREAM Academy and Quinnipiac Real World Math STEM School.
On Thursday, aldermanic committee members expressed gratitude to school district leaders for their efforts in leading the city through an unprecedented international emergency.
Last year, the Alder Richard Furlow, D-27, and Alder Sal DeCola were the most vocal on the committee in opposing the school board asking for a $10.8 million increase in its annual budget. DeCola disagreed with district leaders’ claims that the district is underfunded, highlighting that the city had increased its annual funding to the school board by $15.2 million since 2012 — a figure that increased $1 million this year. And Furlow said he did not see school leaders making “tough decisions” before asking for millions more in funding from the city.
On Thursday, both DeCola and Furlow said they would need more time to process the board’s presentation.