Parents push back on proposed Sharon Center School budget cuts

SHARON – In a last-ditch effort to avoid a proposed $70,000 cut to the Sharon Center School’s 2026-27 budget, local parents are mobilizing – packing meetings, posting flyers and warning that reductions could undermine the school’s future. Sharon resident Veronica Betts plastered the town with posters earlier this week, urging residents to attend town meetings to voice support for the Board of Education, which determines the SCS budget.

“We shouldn’t be talking about defunding the school,” said Betts, who has a young daughter en- rolled in Sharon Daycare, part of SCS. “These are kids, this is so short-sighted and ridiculous.” The cuts, if adopted, could affect the staff salary line, supplies and even the cafeteria, which would require premade lunches to be delivered from HVRHS.

With a daughter at Sharon Daycare, Betts said her hope is to stay in the public school, but if support isn’t given to SCS, she and her family are considering a move to Indian Mountain School, the Lakeville-based pre-kindergarten through ninth grade private school where tuition ranges from $31,250 to $88,385.

Meghan Kenny, whose children are fourth-generation students at SCS, said she worries about the future of the school. An avid supporter of SCS, Kenny said she has seen some improvements between the BOE and the parent-teacher organization, but noted, “these proposed cuts represent a step in the wrong direction.”

She said the proposed 0% budget increase has driven her to start looking for property in nearby Salisbury to send her children to a different school. Kenny and Betts also spoke out at a packed Town Hall on Friday night, April 24, where local parents voiced nearly unified support for more funding in the elementary school budget.

The meeting was intended as the hearing for both the school and municipal budgets, but its nearly two-hour runtime was almost entirely dedicated to reviewing the BOE’s 2026-27 spending plan, which was subject to a last minute cut of $70,000 by the BOF to keep the bottom line flat from last year. If approved, it will be the fifth straight year of zero increase to the BOE’s budget.

Due to a state law known as the minimum budget requirement or MBR, towns in Connecticut are not allowed to spend less on education than any previous year. The BOF has repeatedly stated the rationale for keeping the bottom line flat is to keep the MBR stable. BOF member John Hecht defended the cuts during Friday’s hearing stating that the per pupil amount, totaling some $48,000, is the highest in the state and third highest in the country.

Still, residents were not swayed.

“Who cares,” said William Betts of the per pupil costs, affirming that his motivation as a taxpayer is to invest in education. He advocated to put funding back into arts and school supplies lines which had been cut, saying the arts are often the first to go when budgets are trimmed. “I think we have to rethink that,” he said.

BOE Chair Phillip O’Reilly and BOE member Peter Birnbaum said that the reality of the school’s student body and environment is not reflected by the per pupil costs, which don’t account for tuition students, of which there are projected to be 14 next year, or the 60 daycare students that use the school’s facilities. “We need to understand that Sharon Center School is more than K-8 – we have a daycare,” O’Reilly said.

SCS Principal Carol Tomkalski, who pushed back on the cuts, said students’ needs are “broad” and “complex,” which also accounts for the high per pupil cost, noting that approximately 18-20% of students have disabilities. Further, “we support our students as whole children,” she said, noting that the cost “is not inefficiency, it is investment.”

Still, both Tomalski and O’Reilly stated that they are confident that students will receive the education and services they need with the proposed budget. Parents remained wary, though, and many spoke out in favor of reinvesting funds into the budget and bringing it back above the MBR.

Community activist Jill Drew has been openly outspoken in past years about raising the budget beyond the flatline, and reaffirmed that opinion Friday evening. “We have a very special school and the costs are high,” she said, saying that with rising operational costs across the region, a flat budget for next year doesn’t make sense. She requested the BOF to allow the BOE to return to its budget before the required $70,000 cut.

The vast majority of the public testimony followed a similar sentiment. “I haven’t heard a rationale for why [the budget increase] is zero,” said Nancy Birnbaum. “It seems like everyone who’s spoken wants an increase,” she said.

Several days after the hearing, BOF Chair Thomas Bartram said that while he understands the concerns of parents and residents and appreciated the public engagement, many who spoke on Friday night seemed to lack context on the BOF’s decision to flatline the MBR.

“Several years ago, we put capital expenditures for the school building in the Board of Education budget, which was in essence a mistake on our part,” he said.

Since then, the BOE has been operating on an “inflated” budget due to that capital that was included, and the MBR which doesn’t allow the removal of funds from the previous year’s education budget. He said that the tone of Friday’s hearing departed from previous years, where residents this year have been more scrutinizing of education spending and SCS’s per pupil costs. The BOF’s goal was to account for what it thought was taxpayer concerns while supporting an operable budget for the school.

“It is the belief of the majority of the Board of Finance that the budget they presented is what they can run on,” he said.

The Board of Finance is expected to review whether there is any feasible way to shift available funding into the Board of Education operating budget, including tuition revenue currently included in the Board of Selectmen budget or savings from the regional school assessment, which is lower than last year’s.

Bartram said that while he awaits the outcome, both options are essentially “not spendable” money under normal circumstances as they come in the form of credit or grants that don’t impact bottom lines.

He said that the conversation of where tuition funding goes is a worthy one moving forward, though, as the school accepts more non-resident students. In previous years, he said, the number was much lower than this year’s proposed $41,000, or even zero.