Proposed New Canaan school budget tops $100M
NEW CANAAN — If the proposed superintendent’s budget is approved by the Board of Education, it would increase school spending by 8.6 percent, raising the overall operating budget to $100.2 million from the current $92.3 million budget.
Superintendent Bryan Luizzi blames a large part of the $7.9 million uptick on the $5.3 million contribution to the internal services fund, which is the result of a change made last year by the Board of Finance. The change prompted a letter signed by all nine school board members.
The letter did not spur a change, but this year the administration has “some ideas around resolving that, really spreading that out over a couple of years,” Luizzi said Monday in a virtual meeting. “I feel it's my responsibility to put forward what we need.”
The salary expense of $64.8 million would increase 4.2 percent over the current projected $62.2 million. A major change is seen in the employee benefits expense, which is increasing 43.6 percent, to $17.5 million as compared to this year’s projection of $12.2 million due to the contribution to the town’s internal services fund.
The fund allows the town to insure itself instead of having a premium-based health insurance, and has been proven to be a money saver for the district, according to town officials. There had been two such accounts until last year — one on the town business side and the other on school side.
In March, the town merged the two accounts, which prompted all nine board members to sign a scathing letter to the Board of Finance speaking out against the $3.1 million that the Board of Finance removed from its budget. Of that, the finance board took $2. 2 million in self-insurance from the Board of Education budget, to be rolled into the town’s internal services fund.
“I don't anticipate that the $5.33 million is going to be the budget number,” Luizzi said, adding he hopes to have “conversations and figure out, articulate the strategy to get this fully funded in the next couple of years.”
Last year, First Selectman Kevin Monyihan told Hearst Connecticut Media that the Board of Finance had “studied this issue intensively,” and that other area towns with self-insured accounts have a single internal service fund.
Money for school start times
One item on the budget is the negative amount of more than $463,000, which is a transfer of money from this year’s budget that was targeted to be used to change start times this year . In October, the board postponed the switch to this fall.
Since the change in school start times was not planned to take effect until April 2022, the money will be put toward next year, in which a full-year of changed start times is planned. “We committed to the community (that) if we don't change school start times we would not be using those funds,” Luizzi said.
The transfer of funds between years, in a nonlapsing account, allows the district to “ask for 50 percent of the money in next year’s budget, and then 100 percent of the money for the 2023-24 budget,”Luizzi explained. This “helps to level out that funding increase in order to implement the school start times.”
Under the change, New Canaan High School students would start at 8:30 a.m., allowing them to sleep later.
The bulk of the additional expenses for later start times last year was nearly $379,000, which was targeted to pay for seven new buses to transport all the elementary students at the same time.
Also, the district is buying “type 2” buses, which would carry 16 to 20 students. They were needed since a few routes slowed down the morning bus trips for up to eight extra minutes, because of long turnarounds needed after picking up outlying students.
The board is expected to vote on the budget in the next few weeks. A school budget presentation will be made on Jan. 25 before the Board of Selectmen, then it will go to the Board of Finance in February and March and then the Town Council with the final vote on the budget planned for March 30.