Windsor superintendent calls for $80M budget

Jan. 19—WINDSOR — Superintendent of Schools Terrell Hill has proposed an $80,184,011 budget for the 2023-24 school year, which is a 4.84% increase over this year.

At Wednesday's Board of Education meeting, Hill highlighted the main reasons for the addition of $3.7 million for next year's budget.

The cost of almost everything has gone up, which is why a lot of increases will be seen, he told the school board.

One of the biggest changes comes from contractual obligations to the various union bargaining units, he said.

Of the total budget increase, 2.44% is to accommodate the pay raises of teachers, administrators, paraeducators, nurses, custodians and more. The total cost for that increase is around $1.8 million.

"I'm always cognizant of what's going on financially with us here in our society," he said. "I'm trying to be sensitive to that while understanding that we still have contractual obligations that we have to meet as a school district."

Special education costs also have risen significantly over last year, he said. The new budget proposes a 1.56% increase for special education costs, or $1.2 million

Hill noted that this addition is not a Windsor issue, but a nationwide issue.

"We're required legally to meet the needs of all our students and those needs have various costs and we don't have any control," he added.

The proposed budget also includes $459,051 more for new technology equipment replacements and software costs. That is a 0.60% increase from this year's budget.

Employee benefits, such as health and dental insurance, life and disability insurance, savings plans and payroll taxes also went up for a combined $598,103 of the new expenditures.

Revenues coming from health services and special education costs paid by other towns who send their students to Windsor, and state Education Cost Sharing grants total about $13 million, according to school documents.

To shave costs, five teacher positions will be cut from the staff next school year. In the proposed budget, Windsor High School will lose a science, social studies and family consumer science teacher position. The other two positions have not yet been determined, Hill said.

Hill said he wanted to keep cost reductions as far away from student programming as possible.

The student enrollment rate is expected to increase slightly, from a total of around 3,200 students to about 3,300 next school year.

The next meeting on the proposed school budget will be on Jan. 24.

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