An Open Letter to Mayor Mark Lauretti, the Board of Aldermen, and the Board of Apportionment and Taxation

My name is Patrick Lucas. I am a Shelton resident, taxpayer, and the father of a daughter who starts kindergarten at Sunnyside School this fall. I am writing in opposition to the mayor's proposed 0% funding increase for Shelton Public Schools and in support of the Board of Education's requested budget of $90,054,707.

The 11.44% increase sounds large until you look at what is driving it. Health insurance costs are up $4.63 million, a 56.66% jump driven entirely by market rates. Special education private tuition is up $1.3 million, a legally mandated cost the district cannot reduce. Together those two items account for nearly 70% of the entire $9.2 million ask. The mayor acknowledged in his own March 19 address that healthcare costs are "not really in their hands." He said that and then proposed 0% anyway.

If this budget passes as proposed, the district has outlined the consequences: either 72 staff positions cut along with all athletics and extracurriculars, or 94 positions cut to preserve sports. Class sizes grow either way. Full-day kindergarten is on the chopping block. Extracurriculars are how Shelton's kids build college records, earn recommendations, and develop the professional networks that shape their futures. Cutting them puts our children at a permanent disadvantage against students in towns that kept their programs intact. Weaker college outcomes mean fewer Shelton graduates entering high-earning professions. Those are exactly the doctors, engineers, teachers, and business owners who would have bought homes here, paid taxes here, and raised their own families here. This is not a concern exclusive to parents. Every resident benefits from a well-educated population, and every resident pays a long-term price when a city quietly dismantles the pipeline that produces one. Underfunding education does not save anyone money in any meaningful sense. It erodes the foundation that makes Shelton worth living in for everyone.

The mayor's own budget address told us the grand list grew over 38% and now exceeds $8 billion. Home valuations are at record highs. The city's mill rate of 18.82 sits well below the state average of 28.39. Shelton has never been in a stronger fiscal position. The full BoE request works out to roughly $45 per household per month. That money exists. This is a choice.

The mayor cited declining enrollment as justification for holding the BoE flat. In the same address, he celebrated record residential growth, new apartment buildings, and subdivisions popping up across the city. He cannot have it both ways. Every new development he is proud of brings families. Those families bring children. The enrollment decline he is using to justify these cuts is a trend his own growth agenda is positioned to reverse. Cutting teaching positions and programs now, on the assumption that fewer kids justify less investment, is a bet against the very future he spent most of his address describing. When enrollment rises again, and it will, there will be no staff to absorb it, no programs to welcome those kids into, and no easy way to rebuild what was dismantled.

Shelton cannot market itself as a desirable place to raise a family while defunding the schools that make it one. The families moving here because of this city's growth, filling those new developments and driving up that grand list, are counting on those schools. Cut them now and you will not rebuild them easily.

Shelton already spends nearly $6,000 less per student than the Connecticut state average, 23% below what other districts across this state invest in their children. Fund the BoE's request.

Respectfully,

Patrick B. Lucas

Shelton, CT