Committee approves moving sustained and strategic budgets to full Board; discusses grant-funded bilingual SLP, social worker and facilities position

The Wallingford School District operations committee completed a budget workshop that included document corrections, discussion of multiyear projections, staff proposals funded by a legislative SEED grant, and roll-call consensus to move both the sustained and strategic budgets to the full Board for formal action.

Speaker 1 highlighted feedback on the budget book and suggested removing a three-year projection labeled as a state requirement because "it is not a state requirement" and the projection added little value and could confuse readers. Board members debated when multiyear lines are useful (for example, for known multi-year contracts or grants) and agreed to keep multiyear projections only where clearly justified.

Speaker 12 summarized recently enacted Connecticut legislative support (referred to in the meeting as the SEED educational enrichment funding) that the district expects to treat as recurrent entitlement-like funding for the near term. Speaker 12 said the district will use those funds to support two grant-funded positions initially: a bilingual speech-language pathologist to meet legally required native-language evaluations for multilingual students and a full-time social worker to staff the STARS program for students with autism. "We are looking at a bilingual speech and language pathologist ... and the full time social worker," Speaker 12 said, adding the district may supplement those positions with other grants.

On staffing elsewhere in the budget, Speaker 13 explained that added department-head stipends at the high school would typically mean department heads teach one fewer period (for example, teach four instead of five) to allow time for administrative duties, and current FTE and sectioning trends should permit sustaining current elective offerings.

Facilities needs were also discussed. Speaker 11 (facilities staff) explained the rationale for a combined boiler-room attendant/plumber position given the district’s large building footprint and the technical nature of new equipment: "We have 44 commercial boilers in district ... We have to have somebody on staff that has that knowledge base and has parts readily available in stock," Speaker 11 said, noting failure to stock parts can lead to school closures.

The committee took roll-call consensus on the sustained budget (total $125,770,104; change +3.326%) and then on the strategic budget (total $601,632; change +0.494%). Members recorded yes votes across the roll call and the chair adjourned the meeting at 6:34 p.m.

Next steps: the sustained and strategic budgets will be placed on the regular Board agenda for formal votes; the district will continue staffing recruitment for the bilingual specialist and social worker while monitoring legislative funding.