The Alliance Grant and Matching Funds

At last night's Town Council meeting, there was a lot of discussion about the Alliance Grant funding and matching funds. If you did not see the meeting last night, I encourage you to watch it on the Town's website. In the Windsor Public Schools' amended Alliance Grant, the Board of Education committed to spend $714,000. The BoE would receive $306,000 from the State of Connecticut. Whether you want to call this matching funds, new initiatives or additional spending, the result is the same. The Board of Education committed to this spending. Last budget cycle, the Board of Education received a 0.99% increase in funding. The voters were told this was a very lean budget which would just barely fund continuing operations. From this increase, we were able to expand kindergarten to full-day (because of savings from the elementary school consolidation). However, in this very tight budget, the Superintendent was able to find over $400,000 to allocate to new spending in the Alliance Grant application without cutting a single position (one open position was repurposed) and with the expectation that there will be money left over at the end of the year. I can understand how voters would be skeptical of this year's budget. In November, the Superintendent amended the Alliance Grant application to add the Equity and Excellence Review (EER) to the grant funding. The Board of Education and the Taxpayers were told that items were reduced in the original application to allow for funding of the EER. Most of these reductions were due to timing differences because of delayed implementation of some of the initiatives outlined in the grant. However, the original application called for $638,000 in total spending yet the amended application called for $714,000 in total spending. The increase of $76,000 in obligations to the Town is less than the $109,000 for the EER but the Town is still responsible for the additional cost. Last night, the Town Council cut the Board of Education budget by $500,000. This is in addition to the $100,000 that was cut by the Town Council before the budget went to referendum. Tonight, the Board of Education will be discussing possible areas to cut. I hope you will come to the meeting or watch at home and share your ideas with the Board of Education. It is time to start thinking outside the box and come up with creative solutions to provide our students with the high level of instruction they deserve at a cost the taxpayers can afford.