East Granby Superintendent Proposes 5.7% Budget Increase

East Granby Superintendent of Schools Christine Mahoney, at the regular meeting of the Board of Education Monday, proposed a $14.375 million budget for the 2012-13 school year that calls for a 5.7 percent - or $781,080 - increase over current year’s spending.

Among the budget drivers is the loss of about $458,700 in federal grants that the school district must make up, as well as an increase of $270,000 in contractual salary obligations for certified, non-certified and administrative staff, Mahoney said.

In delivering her presentation, Mahoney issued a caveat.

“This is really a critical time for us in East Granby,” Mahoney said. “We do not have the luxury of being shortsighted.”

Specifically, Mahoney said that after an extended period of increasing numbers of students in East Granby, the school district has been experiencing gradually declining enrollment. Indeed, there are currently 846 students enrolled in East Granby schools, down from its height of 942 in 2006.

Since that year, the school district has been losing students to, among other things, charter and magnet schools, residency changes and not having an all-day kindergarten program,  Mahoney said.

Lower enrollment, Mahoney said, leads to a chain reaction of negative financial implications, including less education cost sharing dollars from the state, higher per-pupil costs and increased taxes.

“Small is good, but small cannot be ordinary,” Mahoney said of the school district. “In this environment, it’s not enough to be good. We need to be extraordinary.”

As such, Mahoney said that the budget proposed will keep the current level of services in place, while also implementing all-day kindergarten, which actually will save the school district about $20,000 in year one because of the elimination of a mid-day bus run.

By implementing all-day kindergarten, which the school board did later in the meeting, the school district would also receive $4,500 more per Open Choice pupil that attends East Granby public schools, in addition to other financial incentives.

As for other programming, Mahoney said that cutting programs and staff would lead to a regression in the school district, not to mention an increase in softer costs like increases in unemployment insurance rates and Department of Labor obligations.

“I don’t believe we should be paying someone unemployment - to stay home - when they could be here working to help students,” Mahoney said.

Furthermore, Mahoney noted that East Granby would not see a significant, if any, benefit through regionalization.

The average cost per pupil in regional school districts, according to Mahoney, is $13,000 to $20,000. East Granby spends about $14,000 per pupil.

“Regionalization is not the way to go,” Mahoney said.

The school board took no action on the budget, though Chairman Kirby Huget said after the meeting that the school board would continue the discussion at its next meeting.