Second School Budget Meeting Focuses on Performance

One citizen attended the Board of Education's community budget session on Tuesday.

It was the second of two sessions, held in the library/media center of Montville High School. The sessions were designed to give the community a chance to talk about what they'd like to see added or subtracted from the budget, or discuss ideas they have about the budget.

The Board of Education attended, as did Superintendent Pamela Aubin, Assistant Superintendent Brian Levesque, principals and assistant principals of all the town's schools, and a number of staffers from the superintendent's office and throughout the school system.

Board Chairman Dave Rowley explained in each session that the board builds its budget around certain guidelines and priorities, including:

• Profesional development
• Contractual obligations
• Technology

There are also volatilities, he said, which include:

• The cost of health insurance
• The cost of fuel
• The general economy

The current school budget is more than $36 million, which included a federal Education Jobs Fund allocation that is due to expire in June.

This fund, $610,000, was given to the Montville school system by the federal government, over two years. The funding was to allow school systems to maintain staffing levels in the face of the taut economies.

Superintendent Pamela Aubin noted, in both meetings, that the school department bargaining units whose contracts have come up so far have all agreed to freeze their budgets. Salary increases are contracted, but Aubin noted that they have generally been offset, for the recipients, by increases in costs, including health insurance.

In response to a question from Wills Pike, the citizen who attended Tuesday's meeting, Superindent Pamela Aubin said that Montville has reduced staff by 18 positions since 2008.

"So we’ve been responsive to declining enrollment," she said.

Pike asked about whether the school measured performance using anything like the business model used where he works as an engineer - an earned value management system.

"Whether we keep teachers or not depends on their performance," said Montville High School Principal Chad Ellis. "We do have a pretty good record of getting rid of folks who are underperforming. The folks that I would say are weak or struggling, they don’t last here very long."

Do you have opinions on or ideas for the school budget? Come back at 10:01 this morning to take our poll on the budget. And come back tomorrow morning for a poll on full-day kindergarten!