Common Misconceptions Regarding the School Budget

With a decrease in enrollment how can a budget continue to rise? Costs continue to rise such as fuel, electricity, and instructional supplies. During the last few years we have not seen a purveyor of goods and services reduce their prices. Everything has continued to go up. Moreover, some people think that if you lose 100 students you can cut 4 teachers. However, it does not work that easily. For example, lets say at our elementary schools we have 10 sections of third grade. If all of them were in one building and you had 25 students drop then you could cut a position. Because we are spread over 3 campuses, you might lose 7 from one school, 6 from another school, and 8 from another, it would not befeasible to drop a teacher. You have to hit a critical mass to reduce a staff member. The district has been reducing staff when feasible. The district continues to monitor class sizes and reduce accordingly without creating class sizes that become detrimental.

Why Full day Kindergarten? Connecticut and 46 other states have adopted the Common Core State Standards that will commence in 2014. These Common Core State Standards are designed for full day kindergarten. If we do not provide a full day program we will be about 50% behind those towns throughout the state of Connecticut that offer full day kindergarten. If we keep a half day program our students will be entering 1st grade missing half of the curriculum and starting at a deficit from day 1 of school.

Why are we asking for SRO officers? What we have learned from Newtown and the 43 other school shootings since Columbine is the quicker that a shooter is confronted the quicker the tragedy ends. In the four minutes or so that it took responders to get to SandyHook Elementary School nearly 200 bullets were fired. The point of having an SRO in the building is to stop the execution and eliminate the response time.

Monroe public schools staff: The Board of Education negotiated settlements with 0% increases built into every one of the unions in the past 3 years. In terms of medical costs, all public school employees were moved to an HSA/HRA. In addition, a medical payout upon retirement was eliminated from the teachers contract.