Schools

Superintendent Recommends 3.26% Budget Increase For 2012-13

School Superintendent Deborah Low recommended a 3.26 percent increase budget proposal to follow several years of "tightening belts."

With countless hours of line-by-line scrutiny on the horizon, the budget season took a small leap forward Monday night as School Superintendent Deborah Low presented her recommended district budget for 2012-13.

Low recommended the district raise the school budget by 3.26 percent this year to meet certain priorities and remain educationally up-to-date -- the number represents the highest budget increase since 2008-09.

The 3.26 percent accounts for a $2.58 million increase, bringing the budget from $79.2 million to $81.8 million.

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"We've been working efficiently for the past few years on small budget increases," Low said. "But the last few budgets have created some pent-up demands."

Of course, the budget has plenty of work yet to be done in the next few months by both the Board of Education and the Board of Finance, who will use Low's recommendation as a starting point.

Find out what's happening in Ridgefieldwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Salaries and benefits account for 81 percent of Low's recommended school budget with a net increase of only 0.75 full-time employees district-wide.

Low said the district was able to find several efficiencies to contain the budget this year, including staffing reductions due to shrinking enrollment, a zero-percent increase in administrators' contract salaries, a proposed reduction of paper and printing costs, a "reasonable" health insurance increase of 6.5 percent and a recalculation of electricity use at the high school to save about $397 thousand.

Factors she said would be a burden on this year's budget were a two to three percent increase in salary contracts for teachers, secretaries, paraprofessionals and custodians; a four percent increase in the bus contract; the continuing MIRMA payment of $68 thousand; and a hefty increase of $314 thousand to the district's Other Post-Employment Benefits package.

Low spoke about the success the district has seen, as well, and its "return on investment" -- seen as a "high performance, low cost" district, Ridgefield sees some of the top scores in the state in terms of test scores and sending students to college.

The Board of Education will continue to discuss the budget through the beginning of March. Board members will begin that discussion Wednesday at the first of several budget workshops. Public hearings are scheduled for Jan. 30 and Feb. 4.


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