South Windsor school board OKs $88M budget, 7.95% hike

Collin Atwood, Journal Inquirer, Manchester, Conn.
·2 min read
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Mar. 2—SOUTH WINDSOR — The Board of Education voted unanimously Monday to approve Superintendent Kate Carter's proposed $88,221,342 budget for the 2023-24 fiscal year.

Members agreed on the one main driver of the 7.95% hike in spending over this year — enrollment.

"We are the fastest growing school district in the state of Connecticut by a wide margin," board member Michael Pare said.

The enrollment is projected to spike by 3.4% for the 2023-24 school year across all schools, for a total 4,917 students.

"We're responding to growing enrollment," board member Madison Gonzalez said. "I fully support this budget."

Expenditures in the budget related to the growth include hiring custodians, preschool program staff, a registered nurse, school psychologist, English learner teacher, coordinator of student relations, an associate principal for Timothy Edwards Middle School, and safety officers at Timothy Edwards and the high school.

The new staff, along with added technology needed for more students, is responsible for $1,069,000 of the budget.

Other drivers include $2.5 million for contractual salary increases and $4.3 million for dental and medical insurance, and building maintenance.

The district's strategic plan for 2023-26 allots $379,000 for after-school programming, cybersecurity insurance, a reading program and the hiring of two safety officers, two instructional coaches and a paraprofessional.

At Wednesday's Board of Education meeting, Carter said the budget increase would have been much higher had the board not approved changing the start times of the four elementary schools.

Beginning next school year, Eli Terry and Orchard Hill elementary schools will start at 8:45 a.m. and Philip R. Smith and Pleasant Valley elementary schools will start at 9:15 a.m.

Three of the schools now start at 8:45 a.m. with one starting at 9:15 a.m. Carter said that keeping this schedule would add $700,000 to the budget in transportation costs, making the budget increase 8.81%.

She said if each school had the same start time, just over $1 million would be added to the budget.

The school budget will be presented to the Town Council for its approval at its meeting Monday.

Collin covers South Windsor and East Hartford for the Journal Inquirer.