The public budget process for fiscal year 2019-’20 is now formally underway. On Jan. 14 Superintendent of Schools Dr. Paul Freeman presented the administration’s draft budget to the Board of Education (BOE).

The budget, as proposed, comes to $60,963,831, and increase in spending over the prior year of $1,466,656 or 2.47 percent. Freeman said the budget is built on assumptions and priorities of the district including providing a safe and healthy school environment.

Freeman said this budget is the lowest proposed increase he has ever brought to the BOE. In recent years, the final BOE budgets approved at referendum have carried increases lower than his current 2.47 percent request, but he said the 2.47 percent increase starting point for budget discussions this year is the lowest increase he has presented in his tenure.

“We do not come forward asking for more until we have first looked at how we can use what is currently in the budget,” he said. “We take great pride in how we maximize scheduling, how we have reshaped offices and instructional programs to always try to be creative before asking for more resources to be put in to the budget.”

In addition, Freeman said the administration only budgets for the number of students it has in district, but while some neighboring communities have seen a significant drop in enrollment, Guilford has not. Projected enrollment for the coming year is 3,232, a decline of 59 students—a figure well above where a demographic study had suggested the district would be.

“While other similar communities around the state have seen that decline, Guilford began stabilizing in 2014-’15 and we started to see a slow decline in the last year or two,” he said. “At this point we project to be approximately 350 students above the mark that the demographic study had called out for us. We are no longer projecting the incoming class based on that study, but in fact on this year’s Kindergarten class.”

The single largest cost drivers in the budget are salaries and tuition. Salaries make up a $1,003,683 increase and tuition is a $641,963 increase. Freeman said the board has done well to hold costs down in other areas, like negotiating to keep medical spending down, and pointed out that the total budget increase is below the combined increase of salaries and tuition, meaning the district found other offsetting savings.

“Education is a people business,” he said. “The most important dollars that we spend are dollars that are spent on the teachers and the nurses, the custodians, clerical staff, and administrators who work in the building with the children of this community every day. Salaries are the largest single portion of our budget.”

For salaries, Freeman said part of the increase relates to contacts and salary step progressions, but also an acknowledgment that the district had to absorb roughly a $100,000 reduction in federal education grant funding into that line. The same is true for tuition, where the state no longer reimburses the same portion of tuition outplacements as it once did. Outplacements are generally for special education students whose needs cannot be met in district. Special education is notoriously difficult to budget for because a change in needs of one or two students can dramatically alter the entire budget.

In terms of investments, Freeman said the district is still focused on small class size, quality instruction, and finding ways to empower students, but said he did not have any large programs to introduce this year.

“This is not a status quo budget,” he said, “but this year we are getting close to being able to say we only intend to rigorously improve performance year over year. There are very few expanded services in this budget that we present to you tonight.”

Decisions to Come

BOE Chair Bill Bloss reminded residents that Freeman’s budget is just the start of the education budget process. The BOE will now hold community input sessions and decide what additions or reductions it wants to make to the budget.

“I don’t think there has been a time since Dr. Freeman has been here—and it’s nothing personal—but there has never been a time where the budget that we ultimately adopted is the same as the budget Dr. Freeman has presented,” Bloss said. “There have been some years it has been pretty close, but there have been some years there have been significant differences. This is very much the first step in a process.”

Freeman did lay out some areas of consideration for additions or reductions to the budget. He said parents had been asking for more art teachers at the elementary level to increase art contact time, but that he had not included that ask in his budget proposal. Freeman said the board can certainly consider adding art teachers, but shared with the board that some of the data some parents have referenced regarding needed art contact time isn’t completely accurate.

“I believe in the petition the board received, there has been reference to state mandates or recommendations for contact time, specifically I believe that we are talking about two classes per week from 60 to 100 minutes,” he said. “I want to make clear that there are no state mandates or state regulations at this time that speak to contact time at all. The best that I can determine, those numbers were drawn from recommendations that the state took down in 2001. In 2001 the state did make recommendations for contact time in all of the district subject areas. The state withdrew those in 2001 because it was pointed out to them that if you added up all of the recommended minutes in all of the subject areas, you couldn’t fit it into a school day.”

However, Freeman thanked parents for being passionate about this issue and said it is something the district can look at, regardless of if that means adding staff.

“I absolutely believe that we need to listen to our community and we need to ensure that we are addressing those art standards that have been identified by the state of Connecticut,” Freeman said. “We need to make sure that our teachers are embedding those standards into the work that they do in their classrooms and in both cases we need to make sure we do it in a way that highlights creativity and fun.”

The other big topic Freeman highlighted is transportation. The district shifted school start times this year to give high school students 15 more minutes of sleep and while things are running smoothly now, Freeman said busing this fall was a big challenge.

“If we want to improve the bus service further, I believe it will require a significant investment at this time,” he said. “Adding one bus to the road won’t do a lot to solve our problem or add more efficiency. If the board wants to look at the idea of investing further in transportation, I believe we need to start by talking about a minimum of four [new] buses, one in each of the neighborhood elementary schools, and that is going to carry a cost of approximately $200,000.”

Freeman also pointed out some areas for reduction including accounting for potential retirement savings, lowering the pension contribution, and possibly reducing the facilities line in the budget.

Bonding Questions

This year, Freeman put forward three bonding items for the board to consider including on the budget referendum ballot in April: $1,269,770 for HVAC work at A.W. Cox Elementary School, $1,567,854 for windows at Melissa Jones Elementary School, and $166,875 for design work for future projects. The total bonding request comes to $3,004,498.

The BOE will hold two public input sessions on the budget proposal on Monday, Jan. 28 and Tuesday, Jan. 29 at 7:30 p.m. at Adams Middle School.

To learn more about the budget, visit www.guilfordschools.org.