Fairfield school board approves $210 million budget plan
FAIRFIELD — The Board of Education passed a $210.6 million budget on Thursday night, which will now be sent to the town to be included in its overall budget process.
Superintendent of Schools Mike Testani said the budget had been adjusted over recent meetings, including by shifting items from operating budget funds to grant funding or vice versa, and adding funding for a social worker position. He said those changes brought the proposed budget down from approximately $211 million to $210.6 million. The proposed 2023-24 budget represents a 4.05 percent increase over this year’s budget.
Speaking about the new social worker job, he said the new hire would be assigned to one or two schools after the district spends the rest of this year seeing where they would be most needed.
School board member Jennifer Maxon-Kennelly said she had expressed interest in reducing the number of assistant principals from 11 to 10, as there is a disparity in enrollment in the schools.
“To have a school with 25 sections have two fulltime administrators and a school with 12 sections have two full-time administrators, I had a real problem with that,” she said.
Testani said the district has been discussing adding additional responsibilities to the assistant principals in two of the schools with lower enrollment, such as leading or revamping the talented and gifted program.
Maxon-Kennelly decided not to pursue removing the position, but said she wanted more clarification on what work they do. She also said she did not see the value in adding a new position of data coordinator, although she sees the importance of the work.
One sticking point in the meeting was $32,000 in funding for the accelerated math program, which board member Crissy Kelly wanted to cut, as she felt it could be covered by funding from other sources. The funding was a placeholder, officials said, and would most likely be used for staffing.
Vice chair Nick Aysseh agreed that if the program had adequate supplies and material, he would then be comfortable finding staffing needs elsewhere in the budget.
“I do believe it is possible to find this (amount) in a $210 million budget.”
Maxon-Kennelly said she was supportive of the funding, as it signals to staff that, as they come up with a plan for the program, there has been some money allocated to that cause instead of having to take money from something else. Other members echoed similar sentiments, saying the funding would show the board is putting its money toward the stated goal of supporting the students in that program.
Kelly’s amendment ultimately failed along party lines with Republicans voting in favor and Democrats voting against.
This proposed budget requests $5.1 million more for salaries and $2.3 million more for benefits, and so those changes make up the majority of the increase. When he first presented the budget, Testani said the increase in salaries were due to contractual obligations.
Other new spending in the budget came from things like a $1.8 million increase in funding for paraeducators, $1.4 million to replace technology equipment and $610,000 for a variety of maintenance projects.
When it came time to vote on the overall spending plan, Kelly was the only person to reject the budget, saying she had no interest in supporting a budget that includes spending “for the optics of making other people feel better.”
“This is real money. I know it’s $32,000 which will come up to pennies ... from a tax perspective, but I have no interest in supporting a budget that puts a placeholder in for something we don’t know what it’s going to look like, solely for the purpose of ‘We have to show a commitment to something,’ ” she said. “That is not financially sound, in my opinion, which is a shame because there is a lot of good stuff in this budget.”