Education Budget

Open letter as sent to Board of Education Members,

First, I would like to thank you for your service to our community. I would like to express my deep concern over the continuing increases in our taxes, largely to support the Education portion of our expenditures. While I support paying our teachers a fair salary for the important work they do, I believe that their benefits are excessive. For example, the federal government employees are responsible for 30% of the cost of their health care while the government subsidizes the remaining 70%. In private enterprise, generous employers will cover 50% of the cost. Therefore, I propose that Fairfield move toward covering no more than 70% and no less than 50% of teachers and administrators medical expenses. This philosophy of sharing costs in alignment with federal and private employers should be similarly applied across all employee benefit plans i.e., Pensions/403B; vacation and sick time; reimbursements for education expenses, etc. Furthermore, we need to see a marked improvement in Outcomes. Our kids need to be demonstrably improving as a result of all this money we are putting into Education. Just throwing more and more money at this problem does not work. Under performing teachers and administrators need to be terminated [with due process]. Class sizes could perhaps grow by 10% without impairing the learning process. Why are our expenses for out placing/shadowing Special needs children so high. Is the child's family being realistic about their child's limitations? School should not be a child care institution. Are the families of Special needs children assuming their fair share of the cost for their child. Is the BOE easily capitulating to aggressive parents with their lawyers? Perhaps we need to be more selective in addressing these issues to ensure the welfare of the entire Town is considered. Do we have adequate Legal resources to avoid being bullied by parents with their armies of lawyers? Are we properly overseeing investment/construction projects? I have personally observed major "improvements" which left leaky roofs, drafty windows, poorly designed office areas, etc. Who is minding the store? Contractors need to be held responsible for properly completing the work which we pay for. The BOE can, no doubt, rely on Town experts and engineers to assist in this regard. With regard to salary compensation, have we done a competitive analysis with other schools and professionals in public and private employment. Are our administrators overpaid, when considering their overall compensation of salary and benefits, given their responsibility and performance as measured my student success and efficient cost containment? Are our teachers over or underpaid doing similar competitive analyses? We need to be more thoughtful about these things lest we end up in a bankruptcy situation similar to Detroit, a once great U S city, brought to its knees by greedy unions and excesses--mainly of employee benefits. Now those poor teachers and City employees face an uncertain future because of incompetent management and the refusal to moderate demands on the System, i.e., taxpayers. Small adjustments in policies now could prevent catastrophic consequences later. I hope that you will consider my comments and I wish you luck in carrying out your difficult duty.

Sincerely,

Anna Pinto