East Granby School Board Considers Hiring Consultant

The East Granby Board of Education at its regular meeting on Tuesday continued its dialog concerning the possibility of hiring a consultant to conduct an efficiency study to determine whether any savings can be realized.

The discussion into hiring a consultant was spurred by suggestions from members of the Board of Finance and the public during discussions on the 2012-13 budget, which has yet to pass.

A third referendum is scheduled for June 14; the first two budgets failed primarily due to voters considering the school district’s spending plans as being too high, at least according to the referendums non-binding advisory questions that accompanied the budget referendum question.

School board member Joseph Doering interviewed representatives from the Suffield and Granby school districts, both of which hired consultants to conduct a review of specific areas of their operations and realized significant savings.

Suffield asked its auditor, Blum Shapiro, to conduct an efficiency study of its administrative offices for approximately $100,000, Doering said.

Ed Basile, of the Suffield school district, said that the the study helped the school district become more efficient by implementing more time-saving measures, as well as improve payroll flow and help employees do more than they were able to do.

Doering said that Basile told him that the Suffield school district “got its money’s worth,” meaning that it saved at least as much money as it spent.

“They didn’t find large savings in one area, but little ones that added up,” Doering said.

Granby, on the other hand, conducted several studies, the biggest one being a $390,000 review of the school district’s special education program.

Granby school district business manager Harry Traver said that the school district planned on recouping most of that money in the first year implementing the review’s recommendation, with additional savings to be realized in future years, according to Doering.

But Doering said that both Traver and Basile questioned whether similar studies would work out similarly with a school district the size of East Granby’s, which is one of the smallest in the state. Specifically, both representatives told Doering that a school district the size of East Granby probably is operating efficiently just based on its size alone.

Doering also cited a Manchester study that was conducted by a Florida consultant that cost the school district $50,000. That study claimed that the school district would realize about $4.9 million of savings over the course of five years if it implemented 20 recommendations.

The Manchester school district, however, won’t save nearly that much, as the consultants recommended some things that either did not work or were not legal under Connecticut education law.

Doering recommended that if the East Granby school district were to hire a consultant, that it would be versed in Connecticut education.

School board Chairman Kirby Huget said that the school district was in a no-lose position with respect to hiring a consultant.

Indeed, Huget said that either the consultant will come back with methods of saving the school district money, or it will come back stating that the school district is efficiently run

“I’m inclined to not let this drop,” Huget said. “People want to see this happen if it’s cost effective.”

Superintendent of Schools Christine Mahoney noted that one of the things the school district had to do was determine what kind of study - efficiency, cost benefit or cost effectiveness - it wants conducted and by whom.

No decision was made at the meeting and Doering was tasked with finding school districts that are similar in size to East Granby and have conducted reviews of this nature. The discussion, according to Huget, is still ongoing.

In other business, Mahoney said that she was awaiting an incident report concerning a bus transporting East Granby students on a field trip that was pulled over by a state trooper en route to Mystic.

Mahoney said that parents of the students were notified of the incident, which apparently centered around the bus driver failing to yield to a state trooper that had its lights flashing.

Mahoney said that was not the type of thing that anyone should anticipate happening while on a field trip and that she was looking into the matter.