January 25, 2012

Dear Parents, Guardians and Community Members:

We are halfway through the year and are now looking towards next year, while trying to finish this year in a strong fashion. We just missed a very big snowstorm that would have more than likely closed the schools for at least a day. However, there are more than snowstorms facing the schools and the town. It’s a storm that comes every year just like the seasons. Most of us don’t think much about budgets, finances, town politics and taxes other than, there is never enough money. We don’t want to pay more in taxes, and the services we care about are the only ones we worry about.

In hard times, we turn in and worry about ourselves and at times forget that there are others out there that may not have the same blessings we have, even as we complain that we don’t have enough. Throughout all of this, we hope someone else takes care of them and us. I challenge you to believe that in helping others, you help yourself. To believe that sometimes you need to spend (invest) money in order to make money and that there are taxes that actually help you get ahead. Look at communities that have invested in economic development, infrastructure and schools… They may not be where they were 3-4 years ago, but they are not doing as badly as some of the surrounding communities.

We can prepare for this storm or just endure it, waking up one morning to see what we have lost yet again. The town and schools do not have enough funding to carry out their mission-- to provide the needed and required services that make us who we are. So I challenge you – this spring, get involved. Get your shovel and help us in this budget season.

At the schools, we have high class sizes from the cuts we made several years ago that are affecting student progress. We have started to see our high performance standards slip. We need a few more teachers to bring these class sizes back to where they were, to at least get back to the levels of performance that we had just a few years ago.

Our special education program has been re-built and I will recommend to the School Committee that it may be time to explore whether we can put these programs out to surrounding communities as an alternative to much more expensive programs in other settings. In the process, maybe collect some tuition to support our SPED department and programs. These programs are mandated and we can either:

A. Build them and maybe get some tuition for them. or

B. We can spend our funds sending students to other settings in other communities and cut our programs here for our regular students.

We tried to cut corners in supervision and classroom support by creating more jobs for the same people to do, and as a result, basically spread ourselves too thin. Our self-assessment for accreditation at the WHS, for example, shows that we need to focus on putting resources back into the Guidance department in the form of clerical support and administration of this critical department.

For years, we have done well making do with very little and maintaining and fixing for ourselves our buildings, technology and infrastructure. The reality is that things are getting old and we have long lists of materials and equipment that need to be replaced and upgraded. At the end of last year we were able to use some of the funds we saved in SPED to get new technology in most high and middle school classrooms; additionally, the WES-MAC PTO has spent close to $40,000 over the last few years in the elementary school. We were also able to upgrade some of our book series and materials, but we did not even get halfway through our list.

This is the storm facing us. We can either begin to fix these things, or they will overwhelm the schools; the town is in the same dilemma. Just to keep what we have this year, we would need more than a 2.5% increase to our budget. Nothing gets fixed and probably we would have to cut programs again and raise fees because the required programs will continue to grow at the expense of the regular programs; the ones that benefit the majority of students. So, we can all help a little, or we can hope that someone else will rescue us. We need to pay our middle school bill and spend a bit on the schools. If we leave it to only a few, then those few will spend much more with fees that total thousands of dollars. Even then there will be much pain to spread around to classrooms of 28 instead of 20. Ask your classroom teacher what a difference it makes to have 20 instead of 28 students.

I invite you to join the school committee and me as we put our shovels to use to attempt to stay ahead of this storm rather than letting the storm bury us.

Sincerely,

Dr. Carlos M. Colley

Superintendent of the Westport Community Schools