Menzo’s high on low hike in sustained services budget

As published in the Record Journal Tuesday January 15, 2013

By Eric Vo
Record-Journal staff

WALLINGFORD — School Superintendent Salvatore Menzo’s strategic budget proposal for the 2013-14 school year asks for $97,603,899, an 8.94 percent increase. A 2.54 percent increase in the sustained services budget is the lowest since he became superintendent in 2009.

“I can’t underscore enough that having the 2.54 percent increase in the sustained services budget is favorable,” Menzo told the Board of Education Monday night. Menzo is asking for $91,847,356 for the sustained services budget.

The sustained services budget represents the minimum required to maintain services at the previous year’s level. The strategic budget reflects the funding needed to act on the school system’s strategic plan.

Contractual obligations, such as personnel services and employee benefits, make up the main reasons for the increase in the sustained services budget.

Menzo recognized that he was still asking the board for an increase in his budget, but he said this year’s proposal was a celebration. For the 2010-11 school year, in order to keep schools running the same way as the previous year, a 9.94 percent increase in the sustained services budget was needed.

“This is the lowest percent of an increase I’ve proposed to the board since I’ve been here,” Menzo said.

Last year, the school board proposed a 3.91 percent increase to sustain services, but that was chopped to 3.2 percent by the mayor’s office.

Menzo credits his lowest proposal to a number of factors, including the reduction or reallocation of staff and energy efficiency measures.

His first as superintendent“we cut staff significantly,” he said. “Those positions were never coming back. The total number of staff is still reduced, but we have shifted how we use our (available) resources and moved forward at a greater pace.”

Due to a reallocation of five elementary school positions and other resources, 12 new items were included in the 2013-2014 sustained services budget: a K-5 humanities curriculum resource teacher; a human resource specialist; world language teachers for grades 3 to 5; part-time career center professionals for both high schools; two part-time career center secretaries; additional full-term equivalency clerks for each school; VoAg aqua culture teacher; VoAg food science teacher; department chairs for Health/Physical Education and Fine Arts at each high school; subject area coordinators for each middle school; part-time custodian at Lyman Hall VoAg Center and after school programming for both middle schools.

The Board of Education will meet this weekend for a budget workshop, where they will go through Menzo’s proposal line by line. School board member Chet Miller said the board hadn’t yet had time to digest the proposal.