MIDDLETOWN — The town’s superintendent and Board of Education pushed back hard against recent charges by Mayor Ben Florsheim that the proposed school budget shows a lack of investment in school staff and a lack of transparency.
An eight-page document signed by Superintendent Alberto Vazquez-Matos and Board Chair Deborah Cain offered point-by-point rebuttals to criticism leveled by the mayor in his April 1 budget address, calling the idea that the district was cutting funding for school staff “patently false.”
“Every component of the Board’s proposed budget invests in our employees and our community. Using our strategic operating plan as our guide, we strive to deliver an exceptional educational experience for our students on a daily basis.” .
The board is proposing a school budget of $97 million, an increase of 6 percent, or about $5.5 million over last year.
In a meeting with the Common Council on Tuesday, Vazquez-Matos said that anything less than the six percent would “drastically limit our ability to maintain our baseline.”
Responding to Florsheim’s concern that the budget would still decrease funding for teacher salaries in six of the district’s eight elementary schools, he explained that these cuts were due to the retirement of teachers with higher salaries who were then replaced by teachers earning a lower salary, a common practice in school districts. He said that staff returning to the district were all getting an increase in pay, and that staff salaries were...
A front-page article with the byline of veteran New York Times opinion writer Nicholas Kristof is the latest poisonous example of what I call the NGO “halo effect.” Headlined “The Silence That Mee...