Swift Middle School

April 2, 2024

Dear Watertown Public Schools Faculty, Families and Students,

Last night at a regular Town Council meeting, members of the council came together to vote on the budget amounts they will move forward to public hearing for the Town General Fund and the Watertown Board of Education FY 25 Budget.

As you are aware, the original BOE Recommended Budget for FY 25 requested the following:

With this reduction, this now means the Reduced BOE FY 25 Budget is now:

The Watertown Public Schools community has two important opportunities to provide testimony to members of the Town Council in regards to the Board of Education Budget.

UPCOMING MEETING & TESTIMONY OPPORTUNITIES

A) On Monday, April 8, 2024 at a regularly scheduled BOE meeting, the BOE will discuss the Superintendent’s recommendation on where -$800k reductions will be determined.

B) Watertown residents are encouraged to send in written testimony due by Wednesday, April 10 to towncouncil@watertownct.org in regards to the Budget.

C) Watertown residents are encouraged to attend a Public Hearing in person as an audience member or to provide in person testimony on April 11, 7 pm at Swift Middle School auditorium.

BUDGETARY CONTEXT & IMPLICATIONS

Each year, the Annual BOE Recommended budget is the very ‘Vehicle’ that supports our district and provides a solid, contemporary education for all of our students. Watertown schools make our community highly sought after and our children deserve the absolute best in our classrooms, on our fields, on our stages, and in our community. The budget is specifically designed to not only support students as academics, athletes, performers, productive/contributing citizens, and most importantly the good people we want them to become. 

• The Watertown Public Schools follows a strict ‘Zero Based Budget’ Process. This means that every department must build a budget each year from zero with rationale, detail, and justification for what is needed in the upcoming year. A Zero Based Budget process is detailed and looks at every penny. It doesn’t allow for padding and requires precision in an effort to reduce/eliminate any unnecessary expenditures. This means the FY 25 Budget that is presented has absolutely no ‘fluff’ or ‘padding’ built into it.

• Annual budgets include all ‘contractual salary’ increases in line with all of our collective bargaining agreements. Please note the following for the FY 25 Budget:

• If everything remained exactly the same and the only that was increased were mandatory contractual obligations, the overall budget increase for the Watertown Public Schools would’ve been 4.28% BUT, we are presenting a 3.98% budget increase. This is possible because the BOE was able to find efficiencies in joint Health Insurance costs with the Town of Watertown to offset the Board’s overall increase.

• Based on our 3-5 year Special Education program expansion plan, we are set to continue building in-house capacity within our school district. Any reductions to the FY 25 BOE budget will directly eliminate the possibility to expand special education programming in the district for another year. Which in turn can increase potential specialty outplacement costs.

• Class sizes in the Watertown Public Schools are extremely important to our school district. Reductions in a budget have great possibility of impacting class sizes if a reduction in personnel is required.

• Infrastructure and facility prevention and protection of large scale investments are at risk. The FY 25 budget currently has asphalt repair, field and turf fencing, and technology infrastructure projects built in. Reductions will most likely result in delays or elimination of projects leaving large scale investments exposed and greater risk of infrastructure failures that impact day to day operations for students and faculty.

Any Watertown community members who would like an indepth look at the FY 25 Budget process and documents, please visit the main Watertown Public Schools Website for the link to the 2024-2025 Budget website for all budget related information: https://sites.google.com/watertownps.org/fy-2024-2025-budget/home

Dr. V