East Granby School Board: No Decision on Where to Make Cuts

After holding a workshop prior to its regular meeting on Monday evening, the East Granby Board of Education still had not reached a decision as to how it would reduce its 2012-13 budget request by $100,000.

On May 8, the school board received a directive from the Board of Finance to reduce its requested budget increase from 4.46 percent to 3.72 percent, or from $14.2 million overall to $14.1 million.

The directive came after the town’s combined $19.07 million budget was easily defeated at a referendum by a vote of 590 against versus 423 in favor. In a non-binding question, 603 voters said that the schools’ budget was too high.

The school board must find places to make the $100,000 reduction in its budget by the time the Town Meeting convenes on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at the . At the Town Meeting, both the school district and the town will make presentations on their new combined $18.91 million budget that calls for a 1.85 percent tax increase - or .5 mills.

At the school board meeting on Monday, Chairman Kirby Huget said that the board could not offer any specifics as to where the new cuts would come from.

In a related conversation, Huget said that he believed it would be worth researching consultants whom the school district could hire to look at specific operations to see if savings could be captured.

Huget’s statement comes on the heels of several finance board members recommending on May 8 that the school district should look into hiring a consultant to see if any cost savings could be realized.

School districts in Suffield and Granby, for example, had their administrative operations and special education program respectively studied to see how their operations could be run more efficiently at a reduced cost.

Still, Huget said that he was not necessarily optimistic that a consultant would be able to find a lot of savings in the East Granby school budget.

“We’ve heard less than glowing reports [from other school districts],” Huget said. With that said, Huget added that “[i]t certainly makes sense to explore.”

Huget tasked school board member Joe Doering to look into how other school districts have utilized consultants and what consults they have used and how much they cost.

One of the issues that school board members raised is that consultants aren’t cheap. The question arose who would pay for a consultant at a time when the school district is struggling to reduce its budget even further.

“We have to figure out where the funds are going to come from,” said Huget, before noting that he didn’t “want to resist this out of ignorance. We don’t know how much it’s going to cost.”

“The danger with consultants is they’ll do whatever you want them to do,” school board member Ralph Blanchard said. “Consultants will do [something] as long as we pay them.”

The second budget referendum is scheduled for May 23 at the Community/Senior Center.

In other business, the school board recognized the achievements of several East Granby High students.

Huget issued a certificate for Sean Rosenberger in recognition of Rosenberger serving as a student representative on the school board.

In addition, Huget presented Michael Han with the 16th annual CABE Student Leadership Award.