“The Worst I’ve Ever Seen It”: BOE Contemplates Loss of 22 District Positions
- Philip Thibodeau
- Apr 27
- 4 min read
Southington Board of Education member Colleen Clark pulled no punches when she described her reaction to the $1.6 million cut to the District’s budget proposed by the Board of Finance: “I think of [former Board of Finance chair] Phil Pomposi who would say, it’s a bad year every year. But this, quite frankly, is the worst I’ve ever seen it. I’ve been doing this for a while, and this just makes me ill.”
At a special meeting held last Thursday night, the Board of Education discussed what such a cut would look like in terms of personnel and service reductions. As Board Chair Zaya Oshana indicated, the meeting was timed to ensure that the potential consequences were made public before the Town Council started debating whether or not to accept Finance’s recommendation. Superintendent Steve Madancy gave a slide presentation outlining what he thought the proposed reduction would involve.
Since expenditures on personnel make up the lion’s share of the school budget, achieving a $1.6 million reduction would require the district to both cancel any planned hires and eliminate existing teaching and staff lines. First to go would be the 4.3 new lines that the Board of Education had approved: a social worker, a special education teacher, a TESOL teacher for students with limited English, an elementary school teacher, and one-third of a line for a high school business teacher. Together those cuts would save about $320,000.
In addition, the district would have to trim the equivalent of 22 full-time positions, broken out as follows:
Speaking of the six vacancies that would be created by layoffs or retirements, Madancy said that he could not yet identify which schools would be affected, since a final decision would have to await summer enrollment reports.
Cutting these 22 positions would save the District another $1,340,000. That plus savings from the elimination of the new positions would cover the reduction proposed by the Board of Finance. A further step Madancy wanted the district to look at in May is a pay-to-play fee for students who join athletic teams. While no details for this were given, it was included in the slides as a revenue item amounting to $50,000 per year.
After the presentation, Madancy fielded comments from members of the Board. Dawn Derynoski-Anastasio asked whether any lines from central office could be cut to save money. Madancy treaded delicately around the question, saying that the answer was yes, but that he did not include the position in his list “out of fairness to that person,” in the same way that he would not want to identify by name any teachers or janitorial staff who might be laid off.
Bob Brown then asked whether Madancy had considered adding a fee for students who park in the high school parking lot. The Superintendent replied that while he had entertained the idea, he felt it would be unfair to the parents of students who have just seen their tax dollars go towards the construction of a new lot.
Opposition to the cut was bi-partisan, at least among Board members who spoke up at the meeting. Clark, the head of the Republican caucus, underscored what a setback the loss of teaching assistants would be for the implementation of the District’s new reading curriculum. Sean Carson made a more general point about Southington’s financial commitment to education, stating that while neighboring districts spend between $22,000 and $25,000 per student each year, Southington spends less than $20,000 per pupil, “and we’re sitting here discussing… a $1.6 million reduction.”
There are several reasons that the Board of Finance voted to recommend a $1.6 million cut to the Board of Education’s proposed budget. One is to keep a forthcoming property tax increase as low as possible. A second is to alleviate the extra tax burden placed on the owners of modestly-sized properties by revaluation. Finally, residents and elected officials have commented in passing that the District’s demands are beginning to compete with each other, now that the town has agreed to fund construction of a new parking lot and tennis complex at the high school, and is looking to move forward with a costly elementary school rebuild, should it be approved in November at a referendum.
One wild card in these deliberations is whether the State Legislature and Governor will agree on an increase in state aid to municipalities for education, also known as Educational Cost Sharing. A decision on this should be made by May 6. Were that to happen, the District might be able to afford more of its desired services and staffing – although it could also happen that the Town Council would leave the proposed budget cut in place, and in effect convert the state aid into a tax cut for residents.
Madancy’s final slide provided a list of important upcoming dates in the budgetary process:
Monday, April 27, Town Council Public Hearing
Wednesday, May 6, Legislative Session Ends
Thursday, May 7, Next Regular BOE Meeting
Monday, May 11, Town Council Adopts Budget
Thursday, May 28, BOE Budget Reallocation Meeting
