NAUGATUCK — The Board of Education unanimously approved Superintendent of Schools Sharon Locke’s proposed 2015-16 school budget last week.
The proposed total operating budget is $69.2 million, which includes grant and supplemental revenue. The allocation the school board is seeking from the borough is $62.5 million, an increase of nearly $1.6 million or 2.62 percent from the current fiscal year.
Salaries comprise the bulk of the budget, 55 percent, but the largest increase comes in benefits. Benefits are set to increase nearly $1.36 million, which includes $376,244 more to fully fund the board’s pension contribution at the level recommended by actuaries and a $764,000 increase for health benefits, according to a financial plan presented during a budget workshop.
The proposed spending plan also reduces the equivalent of 21.5 full-time positions, including one administrator, 6.6 teachers, five paraprofessionals, 1.5 instructional aids, 0.1 psychologists, 3.5 secretaries, one social worker assistant, 0.5 custodians, 1.5 security personnel and 0.5 information technology personnel.
“We built the budget from the needs of our students up. We didn’t build it from a reduction point. In doing that we were able to indentify 21.5 positions, in collaboration with our principals, to reduce that helped mitigate those increases,” Locke said.
Locke said the spending increase would have been approximately 5.5 percent without the reductions in staff.
Gov. Dannel Malloy’s budget proposal for the state, which he outlined the day before the school board meeting, keeps state education funding level.
Locke said the school budget was crafted around the expectation that the district was not going to receive an increase in funding from the state this year.
“We were anticipating the funds coming from the governor and the state would be relatively flat. Yesterday, in the governor’s speech, he indicated that was an appropriate guesstimate,” Locke said.
Board of Education member Glenn Connan voiced his support of the budget, saying if the district received more funds from the state, the proposed increase would have been smaller.
“I think we might want to note that, although it is a 2.62 percent increase in the borough’s share, that’s because the grants are flat. The spending increase is not 2.62 percent. They’re not spending 2.62 percent more than last year,” Connan said.
Connan said the spending increase is closer to 2.3 percent.
Not everyone was a fan of the proposed budget, however.
The spending plan eliminates the family and consumer sciences class at City Hill Middle School.
Holly Sheehy, who teaches the class, came before the board to ask for it to be put back in the budget.
“I would like you to reconsider eliminating family and consumer science at City Hill. This would be a great disservice to the students of Naugatuck. All the students at City Hill currently take family and consumer science. They learn life skills, the ones used on a daily basis throughout their lifetimes,” Sheehy said.
Janet Sabal, an art teacher at City Hill, presented the board with a petition the students put together to save the class from being cut.
The school board will present its budget request to the Board of Finance on March 9.
