Public Talks, West Hartford BoE Listens: Adds To Budget

WEST HARTFORD, CT — Ask and you shall receive.

The West Hartford Board of Education approved a final 2023-24 education budget plan Tuesday night after more deliberations and pleas from residents, opting for additions in response to those pleas.

Among the additions were athletics pay-to-play subsidies, the reinstatement of a full STEM coordinator at a magnet school and the addition of a half-time elementary school instrumental music teacher.

With a 6-1 vote, the school board added a net total of $229,864 to the school budget's bottom line, creating a new spending plan of $190,124,680, which is 4.93 percent larger than current spending.

School board member Gayle Harris was the lone budget opponent.

The changes

As part of Tuesday night's budget adoption vote, the school board:

• Added $104,930 to undo a plan to merge a science teacher position with a STEM coordinator position as the STEM-themed Florence E. Smith STEM School.

The plan was controversial as many parents worried cutting a STEM coordinator job and merging those duties with a teacher would short-change pupils at the STEM elementary school.

• Added $46,305 to add a half-time elementary school instrumental music teacher.

Plans had called to cut what amounted to a full-time teacher, though no positions would have been lost, just the number of hours some of the teachers would have been compensated for.

This, school officials said, was due to the demand for instrumental music in the schools being down slightly and the desire for more efficient operations.

Critics, though, were concerned the cut was too much and could impact instrumental music lessons to kids.

• Add $217,500 to supplement the school district's pay-to-play fees for sports, making the fee $75 per athlete per sport and caps the annual pay-to-play fee to $400 per family.

This year, it is $100 a sport and a $400 cap per family.

Further helping those budgetary additions was a $138,871-cut from the school district's health insurance fund, a byproduct of some savings the board was able to realize.

Board, public comments

"This is not an easy process for anyone," West Hartford Board of Education Chairperson Lorna Thomas-Farquarson said of finalizing a budget every year.

"Our priority is always to ensure that we are doing the best that we can with the young people we are charged to serve and the families we are charged to serve. That will always be our mission and our passion."

Regarding pay-to-play, school board member Ethan Goldman said he thought the fees as they are now were impacting family budgets.

On a night where many in the public commented on adding back music teacher time to the budget, Goldman pointed out the importance of sports as well.

"I think sports are important. We heard how music is important to families and I think sports are important," Goldman said discussing fees for sports. "I think it becomes an obstacele and a handicap and I hate to see kids not get the chance to play. I think it's critical to give everyone the opportunity."

Prior to the school board's discussion and vote, West Hartford school officials heard more budget testimony from the public about the spending plan.

Most opposed it going into the meeting, many seeking reinstatement of the items the board, eventually, added back.

"I feel that there is an opportunity tonight for you to find different places in your budget to make the cuts needed while recognizing that a STEM school needs to have all of the possible STEM resources that it can," resident Steve Chamberland , a Smith school parent, said.

Other speakers opined about the general philosophy of budget cuts to staff and school offerings.

"I have heard too much about scheduling to find staff efficiencies over the last few years," said Theresa McKeown, president of the West Hartford Education Association, the teachers union.

She said "those are the code words for a cut in programming, to ask teachers to do more with less."

"The implications in the push to downsize and penny-pinch will have long-lasting impacts on the children in our district," said local resident and high school science teacher Nora McHugh.

What's next?

West Hartford's education budget is part of the Town of West Hartford's municipal budget, which will be decided by the West Hartford Town Council Tuesday, April 25, at 7 p.m. at West Hartford Town Hall.

Council members can opt to slash the school budget, but only the bottom line, not specific line items.

Voters do have a chance to repeal the adopted budget, which includes school spending, so long as 6 percent of electors sign a petition to send the spending plans to referendum.

This must be done within 25 days from the adoption of the budget.

From April 4: 'Parents Fume Over WeHa Magnet School Position Merger Plan'