Town manager holds line on education

WINSTED — This year’s budget season has started with a battle over school district funding.Earlier this month, the Board of Education approved Superintendent of Schools Thomas Danehy’s proposed budget of $22,007,740 for the 2012-13 school year, a 2.39 percent increase over the current year.Figured into the budget is approximately $1.4 million in grant funding, which means the superintendent is requesting a town appropriation of $20,594,740.However, at a budget hearing on Monday, March 26, Town Manager Dale Martin unveiled his budget proposal, which included funding the school district at the state’s Minimum Budget Requirement (MBR) of $19,958,149, a reduction of $636,591 from Danehy’s proposed budget.“When Mayor Maryann Welcome and I met with Superintendent Danehy and [Gilbert School Principal] Dan Hatch, we told them that we would include the MBR in the proposed budget,” Martin said after the hearing. “If they wanted more than that, they would have to justify it to the Board of Selectmen.”Board of Education Chairman Susan Hoffnagle said that, if the budget passed, the school district would have to make cuts.“After the public hearing was over, I told Dale that we are subject to the same insurance cost increases with our employees, just like Town Hall employees,” Hoffnagle said. “He said that he was sympathetic to what I was saying, but that the superintendent should be selling his own budget. The board has not gone through the budget and assessed how bad the cuts will be, but there would be many kinds of services that we offer students that we would have to cut.”Danehy blasted Martin’s budget proposal.“It would have horrible impacts on the district,” Danehy said.Danehy then began to read from a poster that is being distributed throughout the school district to get residents to attend the district’s public hearing on its proposed budget, which was held on Thursday, March 29, at The Gilbert School, after The Winsted Journal’s deadline.The top of the poster reads, “Attend to show you care about education,” and includes a picture of a child.The poster goes on to read, “How does $1,000,000 in budget cuts affect students? Lack of support for struggling students. No technology. No library books. Accreditation risks. Decaying buildings. Fewer school supplies. No new textbooks. Poor heating.”