School board members Sharon D’Orso, Fran Walton and Mike Taylor chatted before Saturday morning’s budget hearing.
Gaps in staffing and special education services, cracks in the once-great Ridgefleld’s public schools’ foundation of curriculum, staff development and teacher training — these are the problems to be addressed by a proposed 6% spending increase, speakers at Saturday’s school budget hearing argued.
“While I recognize this budget is higher than in years past, it is not an extravagant or padded budget,” said Kerry Hanlon of Ledges Road.
The 6% budget increase addresses “gaps” in basic infrastructure and staffing, she said, not a venture in ambitious new programs.
“Personally, I’d love to see robotics, coding, and more mental health support,” she added. “…This is a budget that gets us where we need to be to grow.”
“We need to remember that we want to support the future. Our children are our future,” said Suzanne Sherter of Haviland Road. “Yes, we were great. We are not great any more. We have cracks in our foundation…
“This budget fill in the cracks in our foundation,” she said.
There were a couple of dissenting voices that questioned new School Superintendent Karen Baldwin’s proposal for a 6.16% increase that would bring school spending $5.3 million to $91,378,000..
“I have no idea how the school board can possibly approve a budget that’s up over 6% year on year,” said Steve Jameson of West Mountain Road.
“As far as I know, the economy is not growing 6% a year. Inflation is not growing 6% a year…
“If you approve this budget, our taxes will be going up 5, 6%,” he said.
“We all know Ridgefield Schools are already great. I urge the board to go back and reconsider this budget.”
But not everyone agreed Ridgefield Schools are the great educational institutions they’re cracked up to be.
“At one point they were great, but times have changed,” said Melissa Jackson of Deer Hill Drive.
“Dr. Baldwin has come in with fresh eyes and seen we’re not so great and we need to make some changes so we can be great again,” she said.
Even a Board of Education member, Tracey O’Connor, lined up with the notion that the Ridgefield’s schools don’t live up to the reputation they’ve built up.
“You said we already have a great school system,” she said, in board discussion at the end of the hearing. Well, obviously, we don’t.”
About 40 people attended the school budget public hearing Saturday morning, Feb. 20, though they didn’t look like much of a crowd in auditorium of Scotts Ridge Middle School auditorium. Thirteen people spoke, with budget supporters outnumbering critics 11-to-2.
Overall, the hearing was strongly in support of the budget request that Superintendent Karen Baldwin outlined in a shortened presentation.
“What’s driving our work is an adaptive challenge to meet the needs of all children in a chaning global society,” Baldwin said.
To thrive in the world they are growing into, children need the skills of “communication, problem solving and critical thinking,” Baldwin said.
She outlined her request for new staffing equivalent to 12 full time positions — including a special education teacher and five special education paraprofessionals.
Overall, staff additions accounts for $588,000, according to Baldwin’s budget powerpoint. New “certified” staff — those requiring education credentials, such as teachers and administrators — are adding $260,000. New non-certified staff — the five paraprofessionals, a new custodian, a webmaster — would add about $328,000.
Much of the total cost increase is in salary and benefits. A new teachers’ contract awarded the schools’ largest union group an increase of 3.69% next year, part of settlement that give teachers 9.75% over three years.
And employee benefits will cost about $17 million, Baldwin said — $12 million of it for health insurance.
Eighty-one percent of our budget is dedicated to people and employee benefits,” Baldwin said.
“Continuous improvement initiatives” in her budget include: K-12 curriculum revision and curriculum mapping; increased training for teacher in “responsive classroom” techniques — that help build students’ social skills — from kindergarten through eighth grade; “job-embedded professional leanring” so teachers receive training in the context of their own classrooms; improvements in digital learning and assistive technology, and a “leadership restructuring” that creates a new K-12 STEM (science, technology, engineering and math)
supervisor, and a new K-12 humanities supervisor — while adding only about $8,000 in cost due to offsetting cuts in the reorganization scheme.
Thanks to the Board of Education’s effort to keep down costs and have employee share in the expenses such as the insurance premiums, Baldwin said, the total for health insurance is still less than the budget in 2011-12 sought.
Most speakers supported the budget, some passionately.
“I’ve carried this budget in my purse. I”ve taken this budget to dinner parties,” said Rayda Krell of Wooster Heights Drive.
She’s studied the $91 million request closely, Krell said, looking for unreasonable requests.
“I don’t see any golden toilets in this budget,” she said.
“I hope the board approves this budget in its entirety. I hope we, as voters, will be given the opportunity to vote on this budget.”
Pam Banks of Nutmeg Ridge was one of several speakers who thought Dr. Baldwin deserved support for her first request after a top to bottom review on zero-based budgeting principles. In the following years, the results of Dr. Baldwin’s initiatives could be measured and judged.
“We hired Dr Baldwin to take us to the next level,” she said. “…We need to start at a place we can build upon.”
She was also one of several speakers to back the budget’s emphasis on better serving special needs students.
“I appreciate the focus on all students — that’s absolutely critical,” Banks said.
Christine Moore of Scotts Ridge Road noted that she had a son in third grade and had taught special education in nearby New York State for 20 years.
“I commend Dr. Baldwin for this budget, which really speaks to the needs of every child,” she said.
“Every dollar she laid out is going to be well-spent.”
Steve Cole was the second speaker to oppose the budget increase, joining Steve Jameson.
“There’s not a school district we’ve seen in the last five years where they had a budget increase of 6%,” he said.
Seniors haven’t had a COLA increase in three of the last four years, Cole said.
“You’re not going to be able to keep the seniors, or other moderate income people, with a budget like this,” he said.
Kaitlyn Fox, a student, rose to join the adults and speak briefly at the hearing.
“Please support the budget,” she said.
“The changes we must make to our special ed program are legal obligations,” said Stephanie Anderson of Barrack Hill Road.
If the town and school fails to straighten out the problems with special education, she warned, there will be lawsuits, and the costs of losing legal battles.
“We will be sorely reminded of our neglect,” she said.
The theme of problems in adequately serving special education students was picked up in the school board discussion that followed the public’s comments on the budget.
The schools have a legal obligation to provide the services called for in individual education plans that are drawn up for special education students by their planning and placement teams, said board member Tracey O’Connor.
“We’re accountable,” she said.
“We’ve had parents coming through talking to us about the deficiencies in what they were receiving,” said Chairwoman Fran Walton said, prompting a report by consultants on the special education program
“It was not easy to hear,” she said.
The school system is on track to pay $1.2 million this year in settlements of special education cases — money that mostly goes to pay for Ridgefield students to be educated at out-of-district schools that the legal process determines would offer a more appropriate education, though some of the money goes to lawyers.
Last year, special ed settlements were $1.4 million she added.
“I think that’s immoral. We need to address that,” Walton said.
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