On Feb. 13, the Board of Education (BOE) voted unanimously to request a $57.7 million 2019-20 operating budget from the Town. The proposed schools budget seeks a 1.77 percent annual spending increase of approximately $1 million.

Next, the proposed BOE budget will be reviewed by the Board of Finance; which will then send its recommendation to Representative Town Meeting for a final review and vote as part of the town’s annual budget process.

In dollars, as noted at the Feb. 13 BOE meeting, the 2019-20 schools budget request asks for $57,784,600 and carries an annual spending increase totaling $1,005,377.

This year, with some significant cost reductions to the base budget acting as offsets, including a reduction in health benefit costs, the schools’ operating budget fulfills all contractual obligations, sustains technology integration, preserves existing class sizes, programs and extra-curricular activities while also addressing some important emerging district needs, said Superintendent of Schools Hamlet Hernandez.

The budget builds in hiring four elementary science teachers to implement a new curriculum-based program, Project Lead the Way. It also will support one new school psychologist and a World Languages Teacher Coach. In addition, the budget covers the unanticipated hire of a new kindergarten teacher at the beginning of the current (2018-19) school year.

“So the good fortune of having reductions is they actually act as offsets to what we are proposing,” Hernandez told The Sound, following the Feb. 13 meeting. “And we had said, in the past years, that there may come at time when we are looking to do something in world language and in science; and that may be a greater than two percent [annual increase] request. But here we are, under two percent, and able to do this.”

At the BOE meeting on Feb. 13, Hernandez footnoted publicly that he should have requested a 1.77 percent annual budget increase at his Feb. 6 budget presentation to the BOE, rather than the 1.95 percent increase he had indicated at that time. Hernandez said a clerical error in the document, which created an unneccessary $100,000 technology expenditure, had not been caught by his office until the lead-up to the Feb. 13 BOE meeting.

“I am both happy and embarrassed that we were able to actually find a mistake,” Hernandez told the BOE on Feb. 13.

The error was a detail listing 40 monitors at $2,500 for a total of $100,000.

“That was discovered today [and] that is an area where the board can take a reduction because that is not accurate; because it is not what we intended to do,” said Hernandez.

As a result, the BOE first voted unanimously to reduce the superintendent’s proposed budget by $100,000 to clear the error; then approved recommending the superintendent’s revised 2019-20 budget, with a 1.77 percent annual increase, be forwarded to the town. The BOE also voted unanimously to forward a requested $1,159,000 equipment and services Capital Plan to the town. Funding streams for capital projects come from a variety of areas including general funds and financing through leasing and debt service.

Finding The Money

One way the district has been working “carve out” funding for emerging needs, while not seeking excessive annual spending increases, is to address fixed cost obligations (salaries, benefits, utilities, tuition, transportation), said Hernandez. About 90.3 percent of the proposed 2019-20 budget will support fixed costs; as opposed to four years ago, in 2015, when 91.5 percent of costs were fixed.

“As we sit here today, this budget reduces that down to 90.3 [percent]; and every tenth of a percentage point is about $50,000,” said Hernandez. “So you can see we’ve carved money out, through the years, from fixed into discretionary. And that was one of the ways we were able to sustain these lower appropriation requests.”

Other reductions to the base budget are also helping to offset the fixed cost of certified salaries in the proposed 2019-20 budget. One cost savings area was locked in earlier this month, after the Board of Selectman approved the BOE’s request to waive contract negotiations and retain First Student Transportation Services as the district’s transportation provider.

“We stabilized that, so we’re not seeing a fluctuation for next year,” Hernandez told The Sound.

Additionally, the budget calls for an anticipated $500,000 savings overall among employee health benefit costs next year, based on past experience as a self-insured district and due employee enrollment district-wide in a high-deductible health savings plan. Other areas where fixed costs are down include $40,000 less for instructional supplies, $30,000 less for building maintenance supplies, and $135,000 less for food subsidies, due to a “very successful negotiation last spring,” with district food services provider, Chartwells, said Hernandez.

“Those reductions to our base budget is what’s acting as an offset to our certified salary line, which is actually lower than what we anticipated, but our salaries combined, certified and non-certified, is $1.3 million,” said Hernandez.

What’s Added In

The hiring of four elementary science teachers will allow for implementation of new curriculum-based program, Project Lead the Way. The budget also supports hiring one school psychologist, provides for a World Languages Teacher Coach, and covers the district’s unexpected cost of hiring a new kindergarten teacher in the fall of 2018.

“The budget captures the new kindergarten teacher that we added at the beginning of this year, for a true accounting,” Hernandez told The Sound. “We added that kindergarten teacher at the beginning of the school year due to higher than expected enrollment at JBS [John B. Sliney].”

The district’s instructional coaching program, now in its fourth year, plans to bring forward a World Language Coach to bridge instruction at the intermediate school and high school. The coach will provide peer support (lesson design, instructional strategies etc.) to help teachers to move language instruction toward a proficiency (language fluency) model.

Adding one school psychologist allows the district to gain a psychologist as a district resource for out-of-district student placements/transitions; and to realign current psychology staff so that all elementary schools will have a full-time psychologist (currently, only Mary T. Murphy School (MTM) has a full-time position, while Mary R. Tisko (MRT) Elementary and JBS have part-time staff). The district will also use the upgrade to have a psychologist on staff with additional training to create a district-wide resource providing support to all school psychologists. The change is needed to address emerging needs, especially at the elementary school level, said Hernandez.

Project Lead the Way

As part of Project Lead the Way, the budget calls for four new science teachers for elementary schools.

“Its project-based and it aligns to the Next Generation science standards; and it feeds into what we are building at the intermediate school and continuing on at the high school, which is the alignment to the new science standards,” said Hernandez of Project Lead the Way.

Four teachers are needed at three schools based on enrollment. Bringing in the elementary science teachers also supports the budget’s goal of providing more planning time for elementary school teachers, to be taken when their students are receiving science instruction.

A Diverse District, An Enrollment Bubble, High Numbers for High Needs

While the district is “well positioned” to maintain class sizes, Hernandez said Branford continues to be a changing district that’s growing in diversity. Hernandez noted one census, taken at MTM last year, counted 29 languages spoken and ties to 40 different countries.

While the district-wide student population is once again lower than the past year (2,796 currently, vs. 2,843 in June 2018 and 2,929 in June 2017); as the recent JBS kindergarten teacher hire indicated, the district is also starting to see a “slight increase” in enrollment in the younger grades, said Hernandez. In addition, students with special needs also drive a district’s staffing requirements, he said.

“The enrollment is a number we look at carefully, particularly because we commissioned two enrollment studies prior to the [WIS] construction project. In both instances, our enrollment is not statistically more than the enrollment study; but it is outpacing the predictions, on balance. What we see now is we had to add last year a kindergarten teacher at JBS. That was an example of an enrollment bubble that we did not anticipate. The enrollment study had not predicted that,” said Hernandez, during his initial budget presentation on Feb. 6.

He noted that staffing of a school district “... is not a long division problem. We just can’t take this number and divide it by the number of teachers. Our students have needs; and some of those needs are specialized and school districts have to be innovative and use their resources in a very targeted way, but not all resources are the same.”

Currently, over 40 percent of Branford Public School students are recognized as “high needs” students by state standards, an upward trend. High needs students are based on three measures: students qualifying under the federal lunch program for free and reduced lunch; students identified as having specialized needs under state Department of Education standards, and students that qualify for English Language Learning (ELL) services (currently, 158 students). In Branford, 35 percent of all K-12 students now qualify for free and reduced lunch, an increase of 10 percent since 2015.

Capital Spending Needs

In introducing the district’s proposed $1.15 million capital spending plan for equipment and services to the BOE on Feb. 13, Hernandez noted the plan has three main cost drivers: costs for leasing student technology devices, an architectural study as part of a “pivot” to begin an effort to address building needs at JBS (the district’s oldest school); and costs to re-configure the BHS lobby/entry area with a state-of-the-art safe entrance that is a replication of what has been designed and will be installed as part of the WIS construction project.

Other capital projects outlined include plans to also re-design the entry inside the Indian Neck School/Family Resource Center and remove/replace the center’s locker bays with bench-and-cubby systems; replacing the sound equipment in the cafeterias and gymnasiums at MTM and MRT, replacing a hot water tank and gas-fired boiler at BHS and installing a side parking lot at MRT (for 20 – 25 vehicles). Among other identified needs, the plan also incorporates system-wide interior-exterior door replacements for certain doors; incorporates a three-year plan addressing air conditioning for the town’s elementary schools, seeks to proceed with the removal of three boilers and the removal of underground oil storage tanks (no longer in use) at identified school buildings; and requests $10,000 budget for additional school security cameras as well as a $25,000 budget for on-going sidewalk repairs.