Board of Education debates spending at MBR level

WINSTED — Can a school district spend money that has been promised to them by the town, but not yet received?This was the hot topic of debate at the Board of Education’s Budget and Finance Committee meeting on Thursday, Jan. 5.At the meeting, Superintendent of Schools Thomas Danehy explained that, last year, the board approved to spend at the level of the town approved budget for fiscal 2011-12 of $18.6 million.However, the board also voted to go through all legal options to make sure that the town fund the state set Minimum Budget Requirement (MBR) of $19,958,149.In late November, the newly elected Democratic majority of the Board of Selectmen voted to provide the school district with the extra $1,358,149 in order to make up the MBR shortfall.Despite this, the selectmen have not come up with a plan in order to make up for the shortfall.At the Board of Education meeting, Danehy said the district should plan on spending at the full MBR level.“I am not aware of any town in Connecticut that says, ‘OK, so your school budget is $80 million and your school year starts on July 1, so here’s your full $80 million,’ ” Danehy said. “You are not going to spend $80 million in one month. The school budget runs in tandem with tax revenues that happen over the course of a year. As we accrue expenses, we pay as we go.”“The Democrats of this town said they would make up the MBR shortfall, but where do you think they are going to get the money?” board member Carol Palomba asked.“It’s up to the town to decide how they get the money,” board member Monique Parks-Abreu said.Danehy agreed with Parks-Abreu and said the point of the board deciding to spend at the MBR funded level is not to decide where the revenue comes from.Board member James Roberts said it was a bad idea for the school district to spend at the MBR-funded level.“We can’t spend money that we have not been assured of getting,” Roberts said. “We cannot pass a budget because we don’t know where the MBR funds are.”In response, board member Mari-Ellen Pratt Valyo said that state law dictates that the town must fund the MBR, no matter how they decide to fund it.“But state law also says we cannot spend in excess of appropriation,” Roberts told Valyo. “If we pass a budget spending at the MBR level but we don’t have the funds from the town, what will happen?” “But for the school district, we’re breaching state law if we’re not spending at the MBR level,” Valyo told Roberts.Toward the end of the debate, Chairman Susan Hoffnagle said she would argue that the school district would receive the funds to make up for the MBR shortfall this year.“How the town gets the funds is all a matter of speculation,” Hoffnagle said.The discussion ended with no formal decision or vote by the board.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less