By James Lomuscio
Westport’s Board of Education in a special meeting tonight voted unanimously to set aside $240,000 taken from its $104 million operating budget to help offset a more than $1.9 million health insurance shortfall this year due to unexpected large claims.
The vote followed more than three hours of discussions on another matter—ways to trim Schools Superintendent Elliott Landon’s proposed $110.8 million 2014-15 operating budget, a 6.56 percent increase. The jump is due to the insurance shortfall plus new educational strategies, including the STEM (science, technology engineering and math) program.
“It’s a significant increase (6.5 percent), and we’re trying to be as responsible as we can, looking for areas where we can tighten our belts a bit,” said Elaine Whitney, school board chairwoman.
Whitney noted that if the health insurance shortfall had been figured into the current year’s budget, the adjusted increase for next year would be only be 4.8 percent.
On top of that, Landon has proposed total reduction for next year of $460,572, bringing down the adjusted increase to 4.76 percent.
That amount would come from cuts in purchase services, such as hiring outside consultants for teachers, not spending $245,000 in classroom refurbishing that could be deferred a year, plus deferring the purchase of “big ticket items.”
“This is not the year for nonessentials,” Landon said.
He added that the proposed cuts, to be voted by the board at Monday night’s meeting, would not “affect the health, safety and welfare of students.”
“Nor does it affect programs,” Landon said.
“Everything we’re looking at is hard,” said school board member Michael Gordon. “Every cut we’re looking at I think you can make an argument for all these things to stay.”
“But I think it is necessary to do this, and I appreciate all the work,” he added.
Whitney said that Landon’s proposed cuts for next year, such as in maintenance, “are effectively a deferral,” and that the school board “will ponder these,” as well as other cuts proposed by school board members at the board’s next meeting.
