Virus strains school budget

Danbury school officials look for savings; hope for federal aid

DANBURY — Without any new investments, Danbury schools are eyeing a 5.3 percent budget increase in the next fiscal year..

This figure is preliminary and will change as administrators to search for savings and evaluate the need for new initiatives and positions, including in special education. The hope is that the latest federal COVID-19 aid will help bring down the cost to the city.

“We know we’re scraping the barrel,” Courtney LeBorious, the district’s business operations director, told the school board’s finance committee on Monday. “But we’re going back to the drawing board and doing that exercise, where if we can find any single efficiencies, we’re doing that.”

This includes asking contractors for better deals, she said.

The 5.3 percent increase represents what administrators estimate would be needed for the schools to continue to cover costs that rise year to year and meet contractual salary and benefits increases, LeBorious said. That’s $7.56 million more than the previous year.

“This is nothing new,” she said. “This is our budget that we would say, ‘If we don't take it away or add anything, this is what we think we need.’ ”

But administrators are still evaluating a summer program and its costs, as well as the need for additional staff or other initiatives.

This comes as the coronavirus pandemic strains businesses and residents’ incomes, which has

hurt the city’s tax revenue.

City officials told department heads that budgets would be tight at a meeting a couple weeks ago, LeBorious said. But factors like enrollment may necessitate a bigger increase for the schools, she said.

“They (Danbury) are having local challenges just like everybody else,” she said. “The message was constraints with the budget. That said we’re going to have to make our very, very, very strong argument. If there is enrollment increase, there is enrollment increase.”

Superintendent Sal Pascarella said the district is planning for “normal” enrollment growth next academic year.

“If things begin increasing, we’re going to have to look at this (budget) a little differently,” he said.

The district has not seen signs of the large, unexpected jump in enrollment that it faced at the beginning of last academic year. Enrollment declined slightly this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, but student population is expected to grow again.

Kate Conetta, vice chairwoman on the education board, noted how school budget increases have not kept up with the rise in enrollment.

“It’s just not sustainable,” she said.

Pascarella said former Mayor Mark Boughton had told him that if taxes needed to be raised this year “so be it.”

New Mayor Joe Cavo has said he is not sure yet what budget he would like to see for the schools, but that he would work closely with administrators.

“You’ve got a new mayor and you’ve got an election coming up,” Pascarella said. “We’re going to have to zero-base it, drill down on things we’re not using.”

He said he hopes the COVID federal relief package that Congress approved on Monday night could mitigate some costs, including salaries for some positions. The Alliance grant Danbury receives from the state is expected to increase by $2.7 million, which is also expected to help, LeBorious said.

The schools relied on grants, federal COVID money, funds left over from the previous year to supplement this year’s budget, which was $11.1 million more than in 2019-20. That was a much higher increase than typical.

The district worked with the city to set up reserve funds for special education, health insurance and one-time projects to help if costs become greater than expected.

This is helpful if the district faced, for example, an unusual spike in health insurance costs, LeBorious said.

“But it wouldn't provide support for salaries or busing or things that are ongoing operational costs because then you’d be digging yourself a hole,” she said.

Richard Jannelli, school board member, called the discussion a good “starting point.” But he said he wants to see what the budget looks like with proposed new initiatives to improve education.

“We’ve got a big challenge going ahead,” he said. “We’ve got to move head to just keep us going, and we’ve got to move ahead to catch up for the year we lost in the past, if that’s ever possible.”