Montville school budget targeted

Finance committee recommends cutting any increase

Montville — The town budget that will come before the Town Council next month will include a flat-funded school budget after members of the council’s Finance Committee voted Tuesday night to recommend cutting any increase to the schools.

In a move that Superintendent Brian Levesque said could be “devastating,” the three-member committee eliminated the 1.9 percent increase Levesque said would have mostly applied to federally mandated special education costs.

The committee’s recommendation would keep the 2016-17 school budget at last year’s level of $37.6 million.

But committee Chairman Chuck Longton said that the cuts could have been worse in the wake of a $300,000 transportation funding loss and a $168,568 education cost-sharing grant loss from the state budget.

Longton said he hopes the flat-funded school budget will be passed or cut even more when the full Town Council takes its final vote next month.

In his budget proposal last month, Mayor Ronald McDaniel proposed a $425,000 cut to the $38.3 million budget that the school board passed in February.

McDaniel’s proposed cut, and the prospect of losing more than $500,000 in Education Cost Sharing grants from the statewide budget, prompted the board to end the contracts of three elementary teachers, bringing the total proposed reduction of the district’s teaching force to eight due to decreasing student enrollment and budget constraints.

The three positions likely would be reduced to part-time jobs, not necessarily eliminated.

Levesque also has proposed eliminating the Montville High School freshman baseball team, a marine science and environmental education program at UConn-Avery Point and a projector at the high school.

He also brought up the possibility that the district could institute a $100 fee for any students participating in sports programs, marching band or drama.

None of those cuts has been approved by the board, but Levesque has warned that the council’s Finance Committee could take more money from the school budget.

The Finance Committee also made several recommendations to the full council for changes to departmental and capital budgets, including a proposal to give a police car in use by the animal control officer to the police department and replace the animal control vehicle with a new car.