Superintendent previews Feb. 5 budget workshop, cites enrollment decline and staffing challenges

Superintendent Dr. Casimiro told the Danbury Board of Education that the district will hold a budget workshop on Feb. 5 to present a newly structured budget approach developed jointly with city finance staff.

He said the district has experienced funding volatility in recent years — citing ESSER and ARPA federal funds and "an acceleration in our ECS funding of $9,000,000" — and that the finance team is scrutinizing repeated year‑end surpluses and staffing budgets to avoid inflating future surpluses. "We've turned up surpluses in the last couple of years, repeatedly and that needs to be analyzed and scrutinized," Casimiro said.

Casimiro also reported an enrollment decline that he quantified as "down almost 600 students," a trend the administration is monitoring because it affects staffing needs and per‑pupil allocations. He described three categories of vacancies: persistent vacancies in a small bucket, hard‑to‑fill positions, and normal churn across a large district; the plan is to pursue incremental hiring rather than a single large hiring request. "Asking for 45 paras this year and expecting to get those and then having those salaries and benefits sit on our books only to turn into a surplus is not productive," he said, explaining a phased hiring strategy.

The superintendent said the district has been working with city finance staff and added that backlogged audits have required substantial staff time to resolve. He said the board will see detailed numbers at the Feb. 5 workshop, with additional finance discussion on Feb. 9 and a target board meeting on Feb. 10 to finalize the budget before submission to the mayor (the transcript noted a due date around Feb. 15).

Why it matters: enrollment and revenue shifts affect staffing, classroom supports and program continuity; the board will consider budget tradeoffs at the upcoming workshop and finance meetings.

Other items in the superintendent's report included family engagement updates (a 'Family University' on April 25 focused on farm‑to‑school and school gardens) and community food distributions: the Connecticut Food Bank truck at Ellsworth School serves the public every other Wednesday and the most recent distribution drew more than 275 families.

Next steps: a board budget workshop is scheduled for Feb. 5, follow‑up finance discussion on Feb. 9 and a board meeting on Feb. 10; the superintendent said finalized budget numbers are expected to be submitted to the mayor by mid‑February.