By Jarret Liotta
Despite one member’s last-minute attempt to reduce the size of staff reductions, the Board of Education tonight unanimously approved a revised $116,173,800 budget for the 2018-19 school year.
Teachers Kelly Zatorsky, library media specialist at Bedford Middle School, and Rob Rogers, instructional technology teacher at Coleytown Middle School, watch the Board of Education approve reduction in instructional technology teaching positions across the district, which they spoke passionately against. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Jarret Liotta for WestportNow.com
Representing a 1.6-percent increase over the current budget, the approval followed a lengthy discussion over $972,000 in last-minute reductions and staff cuts proposed by Superintendent of Schools Colleen Palmer.
This figure, coupled with $1,078,000 expecting to come from the school’s bargaining units joining the state health plan, add up to the $2,050,000 cut made by the Board of Finance last month.
Noting that the district would be “spreading our resources a little more creatively,” Palmer put forward plans that includes cutting two instructional technology teaching positions across the district, one elementary teacher, one paraprofessional, and 0.5 FTE equivalent for a middle school literary coach, a math intervention teacher at Bedford Middle School, and a secretary, among other cuts.
Two middle school teachers spoke passionately against the cut of tech teachers, saying it was impractical and moved the curriculum in the wrong direction to ask spread the thinned-down coverage between middle and elementary schools.
“All of my colleagues are asking, ‘What are we going to do next year without you?’” said Rob Rogers, instructional technology teacher at Coleytown Middle School.
Calling the cuts a “Band-Aid,” he specified that given his tenure, he would not lose his job teaching in the district, but stated there was a real need for this position as a full-time resource at each middle school.
“There’s different needs,” he said, for elementary students, noting that they were teachers and not just IT personnel.
“We’ve pulled a lot of resources out of our system already and I’m a little concerned,” said board member Candice Savin, who put forward a motion to reinstate money for some of the staff reductions using the cafeteria fund. It was defeated 6 to 1 by the board.
“I’m very sympathetic to the motion and the rationale behind it,” said Chairman Michael Gordon, who earlier in the evening announced his resignation after six and a half years on the board.
He said a more specific plan for this fund was needed to facilitate these kinds of proposals.
Palmer, too, stood by the reductions, which were buoyed by an $80,000 allotment taken from the cafeteria fund.
“I wouldn’t have given you the original list if I didn’t think we could achieve the goals,” she said.
“We’re meeting the needs that we’ve articulated, but we’re doing it with a little less resources,” she said.
Palmer described a “paradigm shift” in staffing the district, wherein personnel are not going to be as traditionally compartmentalized by school.
“As we downsize, we’re really asking our (staff) to do things in a manner they weren’t accustomed to,” she said.
Regarding a cut of .4 FTE from the DBT—or Dialectical Behavior Therapy—program at the middle schools, Palmer said she had received many concerned emails worrying the program would be cut.
“There was never an intent to step back from DBT,” she said.
Again, however, she said the school psychologist resources were simply going to be reallocated to make it work.
“You have to flex your policies and your approaches in H.R.,” Palmer said, adding there was a need to balance increasingly tight budget demands with retaining quality staff.
