'There's Another Side of Being Pro-Education'

Most evenings, Caren Wellman said she can be found on a playing field watching her children participate in sports.

That's where the 39-year-old mother was last Friday night, sitting on a lawn chair in the back playing fields of Newtown Middle School watching football practice with her husband, Andy, 40, and daughter, Annie, 2, as the couple's two sons, Jack, 11, and Luke, 7, participated.

Until this year, Wellman was content with keeping her focus solely on her family, she said. But then, budget season rolled around, voters defeated the first referendum and her children came home talking about proposed school cuts and what that would mean for their classes, Wellman said.

At the same time, she saw the stress of the worsening economy on her family and looked around at her neighbors and fellow parents, some of whom she said struggled under the burden of unexpected and increasing medical costs, and she began to change her views on spending, she said.

"I have a $10,000 tax bill," Wellman said. "We are a step away from food lines."

So she started to take an active role in the budget debate, but because family commitments prevented her from attending night meetings, she said, Wellman logged on to Newtown Patch and began posing critical questions regarding school finances and the budget process.

Wellman, whose comments have earned her praise from like-minded residents but also criticism from others who accuse her of partisan politics and wanting to "bash" the Board of Education, has taken her activism a step further. She is organizing a Budget Recap Question and Answer Forum on Sept. 28 at the Municipal Center to discuss the budget and give residents a place to pose questions to school as well as town officials.

"It's never been done before," Wellman said. "I feel like it's now or never."

So far, officials such as First Selectman Pat Llodra and Superintendent of Schools Janet Robinson, have agreed to attend, she said.

Wellman, who said she wants the focus of the forum and any other press coverage to be on the issues and not her, is openly critical of the education board. While in the past, she said would have voted "yes" at budget referendum time, she began to question whether the Board of Education was doing all it could to keep school district finances under control, saying that proposals to spend and tax more need to end.

"I'm the mom that says you can't do that anymore," Wellman said. "There's another side of being pro-education...I'm not saying forever Newtown. I'm just saying until the economy gets better."

Among one of her questions has to do with the now infamous "Option A" and "Option B," two proposals introduced in early spring calling for massive teacher layoffs in the event money was not restored to the schools budget. In the end, the number of teacher layoffs were nowhere near the levels initially discussed.

"You gave us 'Option A' and 'Option B'; Why were we given that?" Wellman asked. "It was a scare tactic. It gets people all riled up and upset."

Education board Chairman Bill Hart said he recently heard of Wellman's forum though he doesn't remember getting an invitation. He said he would be interested in attending, though he was wary the forum may be a "political trap."

"I have no reason to believe that it is partisan, I just want to be careful," he said.

Hart, who has said one of the areas the district must improve on is in its communication with the public, said it would be productive to look at "why did we end up where we did."

"We do want to find a way to get people involved," he said. "If we want to do a flat budget (next year) it's going to be difficult to find those ways to make up those savings and I hope it's not teachers – that would be the last thing I would want to look at."

Hart said one area that caused a lot of divisiveness during the budget process was determining health care costs, which in the end the school district agreed on numbers that netted a savings of nearly $1 million, which helped stave off cuts to other areas, including teachers.

Hart maintains that by agreeing to budget less money for health care costs, the school district remains vulnerable to an even bigger budget battle next year if actual costs total more than anticipated. If that turns out to be the case, the school district may end up having to increase its health care spending in 2011-12.

He said he and First Selectman Pat Llodra have agreed to meet early and often to monitor and discuss health care costs as the year unfolds.

"I'm hoping we'll get the health care under control, that Pat and I, we can come up with a number that we can lock into so that it becomes one less political gate," Hart said.

Meanwhile, Wellman said her family and her children are her world, and she has no ambitions for political office. She said she plans to go through with the forum because it was an idea she had brought up so many months ago.

"I put myself out there," she said. "I said we should do it and I feel like we should follow through."

Wellman later said in an e-mail:

"I am incredibly busy with my children and have no desire to be Erin Brokovich but I need to impress upon our leaders that the way the last budget played out wasn't good for anybody. We don't have to constantly be putting out fires if we move forward with accountability."