One thought on “Superintendent Proposes 1.47% Increase in Spending That Includes Busing Costs for New Start Times Schedule

  1. The per student spending costs do not include debt service expenses. This exclusion makes any town spending comparison a distortion of reality. If debt service expenses were included per student spending in NC would jump to ~$24,000. This is extremely relevant because NC has roughly 75% higher debt levels than the average of the towns listed in the table above and over 200% higher than the Connecticut average. Most of this town debt is BOE debt. Not including debt service expenses — all of which is paid by NC taxpayers — is akin to constructing a family budget that excludes a disproportionately high mortgage expense to make the family budget look better relative to peers.

    On this same table the BOE states that they are 27th in CT in per student spending costs. Since NC has the 2nd highest spending per resident of any town in CT, one might think that this means we have extraordinarily high fire dept, police dept, public works, and town hall costs to make the blended average spending 2nd in CT. That assumption is wrong. The reality is BOE spending per student is much higher than 27th in CT once debt service costs are included. Transparency on the full cost picture including all expenses is needed if we are going to have educated conversations on the budget.

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