Board chair lays out why Bristol schools ran a deficit and flags high-school roof repairs

Shelby Ponds, chair of the Bristol Board of Education, told the board on Oct. 1 that the district ran a deficit after the city reduced its annual appropriation in prior years and used the board's non-lapsing reserve to cover municipal funding shortfalls.

Ponds said Connecticut General Statutes —S 10-262j (the minimum budget requirement) prevents municipalities from reducing local education funding year over year and that the state notified Bristol on Sept. 23 that the city had not met that requirement in the prior year. The state required the city to provide $1,372,811 to cure the shortfall or face a penalty amounting to double that sum in a subsequent year, she said.

The chair said the district's apparent funding growth over the past four years masks two facts: about $10.75 million of the increase arrived as late, state-mandated payments to cover shortfalls, and roughly $3.9…