NORWALK — The city’s public schools face tough decisions in the next fiscal season with expiring COVID dollars, historical inflation rates and ongoing supply chain issues.
The Board of Education closed the 2022-23 budget season last week and approved nearly $218 million in operating budget reconciliation. The city approved the school district’s 4.5 percent increase over the prior year, which was the board’s basic request to meet contractual obligations.
The city rejected the board’s request for an additional 3.7 percent increase to cover half of the emergency aid funds for elementary and secondary schools that expire at the end of the next school year. The district has used these funds to add school counselors and in-building social workers.
With the approved funding, each elementary school will have a school counselor and maintain a literacy teacher and a math corrector. All elementary schools except Jefferson also added a library media specialist.
Middle schools will maintain their number of literacy and math teachers. The district will also increase the security staff at each high school to two full-time guards and two after-hours guards. An additional security guard is funded at each of the middle schools, although the district uses one-time ESSER funds to support these roles.
Looking ahead next year, the district expects to request a nearly 6 percent increase in its operating budget to fund ongoing South Norwalk school incubation, a new school feeding program, health insurance costs and a 1.5 percent increase in teacher enrollment Wages.
Estimate does not include expiring ESSER funds, costs of future strategic initiatives and program expansions, pending contract renewals, or loss of Alliance district status that provided additional grants.
The district is also dealing with record inflation, as well as rising gas prices, the maintenance of district vehicles, and the rising cost of heating its buildings.
“Everything we’re trying to buy has increased because of a lot of those factors,” Superintendent Alexandra Estrella said. “There are a number of factors we need to consider next year that are not typical but will have a significant impact on how we project our numbers given the state of our economy.”
emily.morgan@hearstmediat.com