Newtown faces possible loss of after-school programs, 10 teachers
By: Health Insurance
Submitted: 2010-02-01 12:58:44 | Word Count: 525
A day after Superintendent Janet Robinson presented her budget for the coming school year, people were literally up in arms.
One woman held a sign up outside Reed Intermediate School on Wednesday morning, trying to gain support for the district's art program, which will lose two part-time teachers if Robinson's budget passes.
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There was a large turnout of parents and students at Tuesday night's Board of Education meeting, where Robinson announced her plan to cut all after-school programs at the intermediate and middle schools.
As rumors of extracurricular programs being cut spread before the meeting, an e-mail circulated among high school band parents, urging them to attend.
"Lots of concerns in particular centered around the after-school activities and Reed," Robinson said Wednesday. "Parents and students talked about how those activities feed activity at the high school."
People expressed a fear that students wouldn't be as prepared for high school marching band, for example, if the middle school jazz band were cut.
"There were people who talked about living in other communities and other states where they had no activities and they got in trouble," Robinson said Wednesday.
While she does not want to cut programs like jazz band and flag football, she said paying the activity teachers' stipend is a problem.
Reed Intermediate School also will lose a music, a physical education and a project adventure teacher, in addition to the part-time art teacher.
Newtown Middle School faces losing a Spanish teacher, a home economics teacher and a part-time art teacher.
Because there is a decline in enrollment, Robinson said, her proposal includes cutting a first-grade teacher from Hawley and a first/second-grade teacher from Head O'Meadow. At Sandy Hook School, a second-grade teacher and a kindergarten teacher would be changed from full-time to half-time jobs.
Robinson said the district's contractual obligations, energy costs, transportation, health insurance costs increased, while it state funding decreased.
In total, 19 staff positions will be eliminated in her 2010-11 spending plan -- the others are education assistants, two library clerks, and a person in the central office.
Robinson said she consulted with all school principals before proposing staff cuts.
The one place that will not have staff or program cuts is the high school, where Robinson said enrollment is growing and the number of teachers has stayed the same.
The district was able to negotiate no increase in the teachers contract. It obtained new health insurance options to try to reduce Anthem's current estimate of a 25 percent cost increase.
Robinson whittled next year's budget increase from the 7.5 percent requested to 4.94 percent.
"It certainly is going to be difficult for (the Board of Education)," to decide on a budget, she said.
