Submitted by Lucia D. Jansen
The Greenwich Board of Education’s newly released FY27 budget is not $207 million, it is more than $250 million. Until that figure is acknowledged upfront, Greenwich taxpayers are being misled about the true cost of educating a Greenwich Public Schools student.
The BOE presentation highlights a 3.25% increase, or 4.43% when prior-year unused funds are included, bringing the stated total to roughly $207 million. But that number excludes tens of millions of dollars in real, recurring education costs—most notably employee healthcare. When those costs are properly included, the actual price tag rises by roughly $45 million.
That $45 million gap is neither theoretical nor discretionary. These are actual expenses taxpayers fund every year. None of this information is hidden from required Hartford reporting.
Connecticut already requires all its 169 school districts to report comprehensive, standardized education costs annually.
Greenwich parents and taxpayers simply are not being shown that same information locally. By excluding major cost drivers from the headline number, the BOE understates the scale of the budget and distorts the public conversation about school spending levels and long-term sustainability.
This lack of transparency directly contradicts one of the most important actions taken by the Board of Estimate and Taxation (BET) in its FY27 Budget Guidelines. With bipartisan support, the BET voted 9-1-1 to require the BOE to include employee health care costs transparently and consistently with what it already reports to the State of Connecticut. The directive was straightforward: standardized, comprehensive reporting builds public trust.
Yet that BET directive is being ignored.
For more than a decade, during my tenure as Chair of the RTM Budget Overview Committee, I worked to expose these structural costs—expenses that quietly grow year after year until they crowd out other priorities. This past year, the BET finally acted to bring Greenwich in line with the other school districts.
If that transparency were fully implemented, a key reality would be impossible to ignore:
Greenwich Public Schools ranks at or near the top statewide in per-pupil spending, currently at $28,971 per student.* That figure alone undercuts the claim that Greenwich is underfunding its schools or “cutting corners.”
This is not a criticism of educational quality—Greenwich clearly values its schools and invests accordingly. But high spending should not be obscured from public view, particularly when year-over-year budget increases are repeatedly characterized as modest.
The urgency only grows as healthcare costs accelerate. While some projections cite 13% growth, current trends suggest increases closer to 14 or 15%. These are not rounding errors; they are structural pressures that will dominate future budgets if left unexamined.
Other districts face the same challenges—and report them openly. Westport, for example, recently presented a FY27 BOE budget reflecting a 5.5% increase while fully incorporating a 15% rise in healthcare costs. Transparency and fiscal discipline are not mutually exclusive.
Greenwich residents are not asking for cuts disguised as reform. They are asking for honesty.
The BET understood this when it adopted the FY27 Budget Guidelines. Ignoring that directive does more than undermine good governance—it erodes trust in the entire budget process.
Sunlight does not weaken education. It strengthens it.
Lucia D. Jansen is a former member of the Board of Estimate and Taxation and previously served as Chair of the RTM Budget Overview Committee
*Net Current Expenditure State of CT:
https://portal.ct.gov/sde/fiscal-services/net-current-expenditures-per-pupil-used-for-excess-cost-grant-basic-contributions/documents