Wilton Board Of Education Approves $84 Million Budget

WILTON, CT — The Board of Education approved the superintendent's proposed $83,989,144 budget for 2019-20 last week at a joint

The price tag represents a 2.58 percent increase over the current year's spending plan. Muddying the math a little bit is the cost of the Genesis Alternative School. The current 2019-20 budget did not include the $468,000 needed for the funding of the initiative designed to address the needs of students who struggle in the mainstream program. (It was funded through an appropriation from the Board of Finance through the charter authority.) The new budget includes the second year of Genesis. Taken into account, the budget increase is just around two percent.

As with all school budgets, personnel costs in the proposed BOE plan make up the lion's share of the spending. Salaries ($54,582,360) and benefits ($11,892,696) combine to make up about 79.15 percent of the proposed budget. Legal fees, banks fees, Medicaid, transportation and technology leases total around $9,076,373, or 10.81 percent, the next largest line item. The remaining 10 percent is allocated to furniture and equipment (0.41 percent); property services (1.60 percent); utilities (1.85 percent); supplies and digital resources (2.42 percent); and other purchased services (3.77 percent).

The Board of Education is budgeting a total enrollment of 3,860 students across the district for the 2020-21 year, and forecasting a 9.7 percent decline in students through 2027.

The Board of Education will present the proposed budget to the Board of Finance on March 6. A public hearing on both the Town and education budgets is scheduled for March 30.