At a special meeting on Thursday, February 10, New Fairfield’s Board of Education (BOE) unanimously approved moving forward on the proposed 2022-2023 operating budget of $42,977,752, an increase of 3.52%. The increase does not include capital non-recurring and all education-related debt service for the two new school buildings, amounting to $6,008,810, a 58.38%. The total education budget is $48,986,562, an 8.11% increase.
The vote moves the budget’s ownership from the Superintendent to the BOE, who has now adopted the budget as its own and will present it to the New Fairfield Board of Finance on Saturday, March 5. In a series of workshops, the BOE shaved $192,345 from the Superintendent’s originally proposed operating budget.
There was very little discussion regarding the budget, given that there has been a series of workshops and a more in-depth discussion about line items was had at their February 3 regular meeting. Ms. Amy Johnson asked if it was possible to revisit a decision to grandfather in a policy to not charge tuition for out-of-district children of staff, but Board Chair Mr. Dominic Cipollone and other board members indicated that the issue is settled.
Director of Business and Operations Dr. Richard Sanzo provided more information on a couple of issues that had come up at the February 3 BOE meeting, including why Chromebooks are needed for every student, explaining that they are needed for testing purposes and the possibility that they might be needed as 1:1 devices. He did acknowledge that over 50% of the students opt to use their own devices.
He also explained that over $30,000 in the budget is slated for “different conferences that staff across the district would be planned to attend for next year. That’s something that in the future, if the board asked us to look at, we certainly could. But it’s also important to acknowledge that we have not been able to send our staff to many of these opportunities over the past couple of years as a result of COVID.” It has previously been pointed out by Board members that this is an area that is ripe for cutting.
By Sarah Opdahl