Surprise, Greenwich Board of Ed finds efficiency cuts

A special meeting of the Board of Education (BOE) was held on Thursday to find a $4 million reduction in their $12 million requested budget increase for the upcoming year. After an intense political campaign by public school unions and parents, the Board of Education failed to get the blank check increase it wanted and finally got down to the business of finding efficiencies.

Despite the fear mongering about life threatening cuts, the BOE was able to find around $2 million in mostly administrative items that they say could work and would not directly impact students and classroom teachers.

They took a number of controversial items off the table, including the threat that parents would need to pay extra for students to play sports. This will not happen.

They tabled until next week the discussion of changing school start times that could amount to well over $2 million in savings and the idea of restructuring the high school house model (eg. eliminate one of the five houses that were set up when enrollment was higher) that could save over $700,000. Perhaps they will find other areas that can be cut instead.

Between the Lines: It's amazing what can be done when you have to make every taxpayer dollar count.

Story here