Nonresident teachers’ kids who attend New Canaan Public Schools are not pushing any class sizes past a tipping point where, under the district’s own guidelines, a new teacher must be hired as a result, officials said Tuesday night.
In a year where health insurance costs are acknowledged to be necessarily high, salaries and benefits account for 81 percent of the Board of Education’s proposed $87 million spending plan for next fiscal year. Staffing levels are determined in part by the district’s own class size guidelines, and town officials have asked the school board to look hard at those guidelines in this budget season.
Board of Ed Chair Dionna Carlson told members of the Town Council and Board of Finance on Tuesday that she investigated the question of teachers’ children and total “sections” in the schools, “and I can tell you, I did the analysis: There are no additional hires that occur due to teachers’ children being in the district.”
The comments came during a joint meeting in which Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi presented the Board of Ed’s operating and capital budgets, together with Director of Finance and Operations Dr. Jo-Ann Keating and other district officials. The finance board and Town Council each will review, discuss and possibly tweak the BOE’s proposed spending plan again prior to voting on it.
District officials have said that 51 children of nonresident teachers attended the public schools here last academic year. The question of whether New Canaan should continue its longstanding policy of allowing those kids to attend the schools for free emerged last summer, when it was flagged by a town councilman (the context at that time was enrollment as it related to the Saxe expansion, very much up in the air then).
Specifically, policy 5120 (see page 123 of the Board of Ed’s policies, in PDF at end of this article) approved in April 1956, states: “When deemed appropriate by the administration, children of non-resident public school teachers are permitted to attend the New Canaan Public Schools at no cost to the parent. Such placements will be reviewed annually by the Superintendent. However, the parent is responsible for transporting children to the nearest bus stop in New Canaan.”
Luizzi said during the meeting that NCPS students who are the children of nonresident teachers number about three per grade, and that about half of them are in fifth grade or below.
The district closely monitors its enrolments and keeps a “variability adjustment” in hand in order to ensure flexibility in just where these students are placed, Luizzi said.
“If they are in a school where we are over by one or two students or whatever it might be, then we have the option to move those students to another school in the elementary level,” Luizzi said. “So actually we want to let our teachers know as early as we can where their children are going to be. But for instance this past summer it was very late—it was into August before that notice went out—because the enrolments were just not checking out and we weren’t sure where it was going to be.”
Town Council Vice Chairman Steve Karl noted that offering the benefit of having their own kids attend New Canaan Public Schools at no cost is a major draw in the hiring process, and said it will be useful at some point to have a town-by-town comparison of how other district’s handle it.
“It’s bound to come up, so we might as well take care of it,” Karl said.
Here’s some of that basic information that the Board of Ed released last year:
Out-of-District Faculty Children: Cost To Attend Schools
| District | Out-of-district children allowed? | Tuition charged? | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| Darien | No | N/A | Not allowed |
| ER9 (1) Easton | Yes | Yes | 15% of $17,154 ($2,573) *elementary & middle school |
| ER9 (2) Redding | Yes | No | Free of charge, elementary & middle school |
| ER9 (3) Region 9 | Yes | Yes | Joel Barlow HS: 20% of $18,423 ($3,685) |
| Greenwich | Yes | Yes | 2015-16 rates: Certified staff: 15% of tuition $17,019 ($2,553) Other town employees: 25% of tuition ($4,255) |
| Ridgefield | Yes | Yes | 2013-14 figure: $3,861 *30% for school, town, bus employees |
| New Canaan | Yes | No | Free of charge |
| Weston | Yes | Yes | 25% of $19,384 ($4,846) |
| Westport | Yes | Yes | 2015-16 rates: K-5: $3,999 6-8: $5,600 9-12: $5,998 |
| Wilton | Yes | No | Free of charge |
Luizzi said that the schools’ policy regarding nonresident children of NCPS teachers has been supported not only for the recruiting piece, but also “for the connection, the ownership that teachers—that if your child is going through the system, that there is a pride in that.”
“And also the question, which is a wonderful one as an educator, that if more students can have the opportunity to be educated in the New Canaan Public Schools, a world-class, premiere school district, and at a marginal cost, isn’t that a great thing to be able to do? So it is a nuanced discussion and we are happy to have it.”
Luizzi during his presentation of the proposed Board of Ed budget discussed the district’s guiding principles, broke down the spending plan in charts widely praised by members of the town funding bodies (see below), touched on enrollment and health insurance costs and reviewed staffing requests.
Councilmen and finance board members asked Luizzi and the district officials about the apples-to-apples usefulness of a district-by-district special education cost comparison (it’s a good, accurate comparison, Keating said—see slide 24 of a PowerPoint presentation to be uploaded to this page), whether the district is expecting to spend less on salaries this year than last (yes), what percentage of teachers currently are at 21-plus years of experience (about 30 percent), whether there’s a difference in health insurance costs based on the demographics of faculty (not really, younger teachers just have different health-related expenses) and how the district accounts for NCHS coaching stipends (the All Sports Booster Club pays into a dedicated donations fund and the schools break out what is paid to calculate total cost of program).
Karl called the granular level of detail in the Board of Ed’s budget “really amazing” and praised the district for creating color-coded, reader-friendly charts to break down their cost centers.
“It’s really well thought out—great job, great job,” Karl said.
John Sheffield of the Board of Finance commended Luizzi, Keating, the Board of Ed and entire district team, calling the presentation and attendant supporting documents “fantastic.”
“The level of detail and the transparency and the way in which you have gone about presenting it and talking to us over time, it adds a level of trust and respect, honestly,” Sheffield said. “I know I have asked a lot of tough questions in the last couple of years, and that’s because the detail wasn’t there, and looking back, I think we have realized it wasn’t so much that you were trying to hide it, it’s that we all, on the town and education side, we have had system problems and did not always have this level of detail. So now that you guys have done the extra work to really put in a good system, and the level of detail is pretty wonderful.”
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So you want me to believe that an additional 51 students does not contribute to over crowding and the necessity of more classrooms and service costs. At $20k a student, 51 students equates to at minimum $1,020,000 in additional cost to all ready over burdened taxpayers. I have a bridge I want to sell you that crosses the East River.
OK but to be clear, the question from the selectmen was very specific: Do any of these students push classroom sizes past the maximum allowed, as per the Board of Ed’s own guidelines? The answer from the school board was “No.”
Mike granted but don’t you think these intelligent leaders should stop misleading with half stories? Okay so class sizes are not past the maximum because more classrooms are created. That is my point. Their analysis is irrelevant it means nothing. The real conclusion is that to keep the classroom sizes not past the maximum they create additional classrooms which cost the resident taxpayer. The story isBOE spin.
I didn’t report this in the story, but what Luizzi said Tuesday night was that while half of the nonresident teachers’ kids are K-5, the other half are split between 6th-7th-8th and NCHS. So let’s take 50-odd kids overall, that’s going to mean you’re talking 12 or 13 kids in those three grades 6th-7th-8th or four kids per grade. Four kids does not represent a full class and even 12 or 13 overall do not merit the 12-classroom addition planned for Saxe — the project is addressing more far-reaching, prevalent enrollment problems and projections.
I have had parents of Saxe students, some on town committees, come to me and say: there are no students in hallways and the only overcrowding is in PT. again 24 students in a class. When I attended we had 35 to 38 students in a class and we are all doing ok in our professions. I am for education and opportunity for all children but no more than 24 in a class, really.
The classes in the Saxe hallways are not obvious to everyone because they are at the end of the halls where there is a small “alcove” with windows and they have blocked it with a divider. The one my son was in was not a PT class and connected to a small room without windows which I assume was originally designed for storage.