Flood of Support for Education Budget

Over the past two days the podium in the Town Council Chambers has seen a stream of parents sharing their fears and pleading for the future of the town’s schools.

They responded to a picture either heard or seen firsthand of 24 teacher positions cut, programs lost and quality being chipped away at by four years of budget reductions. During the two days, all but five of nearly 40 speakers advocated for the Board of Education’s $54 million proposed budget and the town manager’s $24.1 million budget. Wednesday, speakers included about a dozen Farmington High School students, who prepared statements and addressed the council.

“The reason I moved here was the location, town services and great schools,” said Stephen Kay, a Farmington parent and teacher in a nearby district. “But right now, I don’t know if I made the right decision. Friends of mine ask me if it’s a good place to move and I say, for a lot of reasons, yes, but I’m not sure of the direction we’re moving now. All four years I’ve lived here there have been cuts.”

Similarly, Dr. Sarah Brzozowi, a Farmington High School graduate, said she moved her family from North Carolina back to the district she grew up in, only to find the schools' quality slipping away.

“I had to stop myself from crying when Superintendent [Kathleen] Greider was speaking, and I have to stop myself now, thinking about what has happened to our schools since I graduated in 1999,” she said.

Eric Reed, son of Board of Education Chairman Mary Grace Reed, who attended Farmington schools as a child, credited his education — taking Latin, studying computers, participating in the debate club — with opening doors to college, law school and participation in a nongovernmental education organization in Cambodia.

“I know so far three people who have chosen not to come to Farmington and start their families here because they’re afraid of where the schools are going,” Reed, 30, said. “They can see the effects of a half decade of cuts coming down the road.”

Pam Fisher, a mother with one child entering Farmington High School and one graduating, said that after four years of budget cuts, her younger child has already missed out on opportunities his sister had.

“My son is going into 9^th grade and he will have no Latin because this budget doesn’t bring it back at the high school… My son’s going to have a study hall in 9^th grade because electives are predominantly for art and my son doesn’t like art,” Fisher said, urging the council not to cut the budget. “Keep in mind there has been a significant change over the last four years. It is a very different education.”

Mary Grace Reed and Greider spent four hours detailing staffing cuts, program cuts and an aging infrastructure — including the remaining sections of the dripping Irving A. Robbins Middle School roof — Wednesday night.

“We’re not a board that plays Chicken Little — we don’t say the sky is falling,” Mary Grace Reed said. “If there’s a takeaway from last night and tonight, please remember how many students we have sitting in study hall. We’ve never had that number, 250-300, doing that.”

The higher number is due to cuts to electives made over the past four years. As a result, not only do students sit in study halls, but they also come late and leave early, meaning less time engaged in learning and less participation in afterschool activities.

“If you said to me, Mary Grace, tell me where I can touch the direct impact [of budget cuts] on students’ lives, there are IAR students being referred as in need of reading resources," she said. "We are at a point this year where students are being referred and we couldn’t accommodate them all — they didn’t get it — and that’s with teachers providing support well beyond what they’re supposed to."

A few speakers and town councilor Charlie Keniston were skeptical. A reduction in the budget request is not a cut, Keniston said.

“The average annual increase over the past 10 years has been 5 percent,” Keniston said. “In the last four, it’s been 3 percent… bear in mind every year the public sees this as going up.”

The Town Council will reconvene tonight to hear presentations from the library, Economic Development Commission and Fire Department and to discuss the tax rate. The council will next discuss the Board of Education budget Saturday between 8 a.m. and noon. If the council does not approve its budget Saturday, it will meet again Monday at 4 p.m. All meetings are in the Town Council Chambers at .