Tonight the BOE will discuss the 2023-24 budget and the full board will vote. If nothing changes, the budget will include a nearly 4% increase AND ignore the impending $8.8 million fiscal cliff we face in 2025.
Yesterday, Stephanie Edmonds, one of our co-founders, met with Dr. Lucero and her Director of Finance, Ryan Fealey to ask about the fiscal cliff and other budgetary concerns. In response, Lucero and Fealey noted that the state is working on legislation to make up for the fiscal cliff that school districts across the state face as there covid relief funds from ESSR dry up, so that $8.8 million is no big deal and they're just going to ignore this crisis and pretend it's all good.
THIS IS AN UNACCEPTABLE ATTITUDE &
OUR BOE SHOULD NOT ACCEPT IT EITHER!
Weather at the city or state level, the taxpayers are the ones who pay the bill.
Unfortunately, based on the performance of our BOE members who negotiated with the Administrator's Union, they have proved themselves incapable of holding the building administrators accountable for the decreasing academic performance of our students year over year. Imagine if you went to your boss and asked for a raise after performing significantly worse for the past 5 years in a row?!!!!
You can read about the BOE's incompetence and inability to represent the taxpayer in their negotiations here: ctexaminer.com/2023/02/14/stamford-board-of-reps-push-back-on-pricey-school-salary-contract-with-limited-success/
With that said, it is imperative that We The Taxpayers of Stamford step-up and sign-up to speak out at tonight's special budget meeting and let the BOE know the questions that they should be asking and the level of scrutiny they should show when reviewing the budget.
Why should we keep paying more, for less and less value? Why can Stamford Charter School for Excellence be one of the top performing schools in the state spending about $11,189 per student, but Stamford Public Schools is throwing $19,000+ per student into a black hole and getting no results?
See our previous post for more specific detail about the budget and our proposal:
Sign-up to speak by sending an email here: jgonzalez@stamfordct.gov
We also recommend sending your thoughts via email BEFORE you speak tonight to each board member. You can find their emails here: www.stamfordpublicschools.org/board-of-education
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