Submitted by Doug Fenton
On Friday, the 6 Republican members of the BET (using their tie-breaking vote) cut $4.05 million from the BOE-approved Greenwich Public Schools budget. These BET members highlighted a ‘plan’ also put forward by the Greenwich Republican Town Committee (RTC) and further endorsed by the RTC Chair (who wrote a “$4mm reduction” was a “reasonable compromise”, implying the RTC wanted larger cuts).
While I won’t get into all of the plan’s specifics (having previously addressed why the Republicans’ suggested “teacher and academic personnel” reductions WILL lead to reduced programs, larger class sizes, and/or less Special Education resources), I did want to highlight a pair of glaring issues with the Republicans’ plan.
Before that, I’ll remind everyone of how we got here.
The BOE approved its budget with a 7-1 vote on December 12th. In the 109 days that followed, the ‘RTC plan’ to reduce the school budget by $4mm was not disclosed nor discussed with the public, BET Democrats, or (at least a majority of) the Board of Education. Its details were only shared by a Republican BET member towards the end of Thursday (Decision Day 2), and then widely by the RTC that evening. There are obvious flaws in this ‘plan’ that public feedback would have quickly identified. This reflects truly bad governance.
Importantly, right before the vote on Friday, BET Chairman Harry Fisher said that he had spoken to GPS CFO Ben Branyan and a BOE member and the guidance was that a cut of $2 million “could be handled. Mr. Branyan stated that to me directly.”
While Democratic BET member Leslie Moriarty immediately disputed this claim (“He [Ben Branyan] texted me this morning that that’s not true”), there is fundamentally a much bigger issue here. Mr. Fisher suggested that he was ‘credibly’ told that a $2 million cut “could be handled,” implying a larger cut could not be. Despite this, Mr. Fisher and all of the BET Republicans voted to reduce the school budget by a significantly larger $4.05 million.
Managing Absenteeism:
Lower teacher absenteeism is an appropriate goal for continuity and better outcomes for our students. However, the RTC’s claim that there is $1.4 million of savings from substitute expenses is nonsense. The RTC “Plan” claims that GPS’s expense on Substitute teachers could be ~$700,000 per annum (the $2.1m budget less $1.4mm). GPS has not spent less than $1.1m on Substitutes in at least 20 years, including the $1.3m spent in pre-COVID 2018-19 (one of many years when Greenwich ‘teacher absenteeism’ was well below the ‘State average‘ per Edsight). Additionally, post-COVID, Fairfield County (Greenwich-included) has seen substantial inflation in the cost to hire a substitute.
Further, the ‘plan’ reflects a lack of understanding of this expense line item. Due to a severe substitute teacher shortage, the GPS fill rate (an absence covered by a sub) is only ~70%. Thus, an initial reduction in absenteeism will primarily benefit the fill rate rather than impacting the expenses of the BOE. Reflecting this, Greenwich’s share of its budget spent on “Substitutes” is roughly in-line with peer towns, despite several of these districts using GenEd paraprofessionals as substitute teachers (staffing that GPS does not have).
Lower absenteeism is an important goal. However, I estimate that the potential ‘savings’ here are a small fraction of those suggested by the RTC.
Given the $1.4mm of ‘savings’ from substitutes doesn’t exist, even more cuts will need to be made to programming and staffing to achieve the BET’s $4mm budget reduction.
The Challenges of hiring at the entry-level step:
In their plan, the RTC suggested most new hires should be at the entry level step of the Teacher union’s contract. In the past decade, the US has seen inflation of 36%. Over that same time, a Greenwich Step 1 bachelor’s degree teacher’s annual salary has only gone up by 11%, from $54k to $60k. Adjusted for inflation, our starting teacher pay has declined almost 20%, with real income falling from $54k to $44k. This simple fact is a key explanation of why GPS struggles to hire quality new teachers at this entry level step.
Additionally, nearby towns and competitors like Darien (+21%) and New Canaan (+14%) have increased their entry-level salaries much more than Greenwich over this period, while also providing shorter commute times and more support resources for many of these potential applicants. Finally, avoiding hiring seasoned teachers can be a disservice to our student population (and potentially discriminatory).
The good news is that the BET Republicans still have time to do the right thing. BET, please re-open the 2025-26 budget, and appropriately fund our schools. (The BET can be reached here, please email them).