Schools

More Money Proposed for Security, Substitutes at Milford Schools

Superintendent requests an additional $209,000 for school security and $350,000 more for substitute teacher pay.

Proposed cuts in staffing allow for more dollars for school security and substitute pay under Milford Superintendent Elizabeth Feser’s proposed budget for 2014-15.

Feser has put forward an additional $209,000 for school security measures and an added $350,000 for substitute pay.

The new costs are in part offset by proposed cuts to staffing.

Feser’s budget calls for the reduction of 15 full-time regular teaching positions, which carries a projected cost savings of nearly $1 million.

“Most of this is driven by declining enrollment,” Feser said in her budget presentation to the Board of Education on Monday. School officials estimate that there will be 53 fewer students enrolled in the district next year.

The $90 million budget represents a 1.326 percent increase in spending over the current fiscal year – the lowest percentage a superintendent has requested in at least a decade, Feser said.

Deliberations continue Wednesday and Thursday (7 p.m. both nights) as school board members are scheduled to meet for budget workshops in the Board of Education room at Parsons Government Center. A vote is expected next week.

Upgrades to school security


“We want to maintain security and build upon it,” said Feser, adding that investment in school security measures – special resource officers, greeters and infrastructure – has been “lifted to a new level with Sandy Hook.”

Last spring, the Board of Education approved funding for half the costs of four school resource officers – one in each high school and two split among the district’s three middle schools.

An additional $159,000 in next year’s school budget maintains this level of funding, which is the school board’s share for the program, Feser said. “We need to put it in the formal budget,” she said.

Feser is also seeking an added $50,000 for three “greeters” at the middle schools. The position has no formal school security responsibilities but provides “a warm and familiar face (that is) comforting for students,” Feser said.

Greeters admit visitors into school buildings, check identification, help students get where they need to go and assist secretaries with certain administrative work, Feser said. All the elementary schools in the district have one.

“Every elementary school principal is besides themselves with joy,” Feser said. “We would like the same thing for the middle schools.”

Substitute teacher pay rate ‘woefully short’

Milford pays elementary and middle school substitutes $75 a day and high school substitutes $90 a day. That’s not cutting it, says the superintendent.

Most subs work for more than one district so they pick whichever pays the best, and Milford’s rate falls “woefully short” compared to neighboring towns, Feser said.

“We know we are competing against other districts that pay more than us,” said Feser, who’s proposing that the district bump up its per diem rate to $90 for elementary and middle school substitutes and $100 for high school substitutes.

Feser called $100 “a pretty common amount.” She said the pay rate was last lifted some five years ago. The proposed raise requires an additional $351,000 in next year’s budget.

Students miss out on curriculum without a substitute teacher in the classroom, the superintendent said. Generally, the district can find subs for absent elementary school teachers but it’s harder at the middle and high schools.

“There are days in a middle school when you need 10 substitutes,” she said.

To come: A breakdown of Feser’s hefty investment in technology.


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