Submitted by Doug Fenton, Member of RTM Budget Overview Committee
As a representative democracy, we need our elected leaders to actually do the work to fully understand and justify the impacts of the decisions they make. For those (like the BET) who have the power to set the town’s budget, we should expect that if they are overruling the recommendations of other elected officials (be it on the schools, public safety, or infrastructure), then those decisions should be well-founded, suggested early, and debated in the public sphere. In my opinion, the BET Republicans’ unilateral decision to cut $4 million from the school budget met none of these criteria.
Looking back on this year’s budget process, the lack of diligence from some members of the BET was on broad display to the public. In January, several BET Republicans did not attend the First Selectman’s and BOE’s budget presentation. In February, several BET Republicans did not attend the BET Budget Committee meeting focused on the BOE Operating Budget. In the meantime, ongoing attempts at outreach and dialogue went unanswered.
In March, during the BET Public Hearing focused on our Schools, while all six BET Republicans were physically present, attendees noted that several spent much of the meeting staring at their phones. Thus, when the BET Republicans unilaterally cut the BOE budget, it’s not surprising that their choice of words to justify the size of their reduction was that it “felt appropriate”.
In what should be a rigorous and data-driven process focused on outcomes and cost/benefit, we should hope that decisions rely on more than ‘the feels.’ Our schools currently educate ~8,500 of our children and employ 477 of our residents. Further, GPS will welcome thousands of our youngest kids in the coming years (including an expected decade-high incoming kindergarten class this fall) and is the institution from which a substantial number of residents are proud alumni. Recently, the Republican Town Committee (RTC) Chair described our schools as the “town’s largest cost center,” a statement that conflates it with the mailroom or the ‘back office’. Reflecting their priorities, in the BET Republicans’ budget, we saw higher growth in the Office of the First Selectman’s budget than we did for our schools.
The BET Republicans have provided continually evolving justifications for their $4 million cut. There was the initial 3-part ‘analysis’ at Decision Day (laid out here). One part was nonsensical in its scope: the BET suggested cutting the budget for substitutes from ~$2.1mm to $100k-$700k (a ~67%-95% reduction), which would have put our substitute budget at least 35% below the lowest level of the past 15 years. Another part would have a potentially discriminatory impact on older teachers: a recommendation for “half to all” new teachers hired to have zero experience so they can be hired at the entry level step. Of note, during the BOE’s public meetings after the BET budget cut, not a single member of the BOE (Republican or Democrat) highlighted either of these options as areas for realistic, material savings. The last part, and only truly feasible of the three, was the suggestion to reduce the number of teachers and academic personnel.
This weekend, a letter from the 6 BET Republicans submitted a wholesale new set of justifications. While I won’t go through them all, I do want to highlight some of the sloppy (and/or disingenuous) work the letter contained. For example, the BET Republicans’ letter included this line: “Greenwich spends over $5 million on early childhood education compared to $1.5 million in Darien — despite having only about twice as many special education Pre-K students.” At first glance, that does sound inefficient. However, it is not true – Greenwich actually spends 7-17% less per Pre-K student than Darien. As the below chart shows, the BET Republican ‘analysis’ compared apples to oranges – it gave Darien credit (but not Greenwich) for Pre-K tuition revenue, and penalized Greenwich (but not Darien) for Pre-K transportation costs. Good faith discussions are doomed to fail if they are met with bad faith.
Representative democracy is the best form of government. While I am deeply disappointed that the Republicans on the BET unilaterally cut $4,048,621 from the school budget with what (I believe) are questionable and seemingly ever evolving ex post justifications, they won the right to make that decision for our Town in our last municipal election (decided by a 51%/49% vote).
Greenwich will have another election this November. Please familiarize yourself with how voting in Greenwich works (this 2 minute video from the League of Women Voters gives a succinct explanation – give it a watch). Finally, please become an informed voter and show up to vote in November.