43
School district faces $5K funding shortfall
Photo
Weathersfield Superintendent Damon Dohar
Weathersfield official says previous budget cuts will buffer the blow.
By Mary Smith
MINERAL RIDGE
The latest estimates provided to the school district indicate Weathersfield will lose $5,000 under a proposed, but yet unwritten new state budget.
Schools Superintendent Damon Dohar said, however, that previous and ongoing cuts will buffer that blow considerably.
The district cut approximately $250,000 from its budget last year with reductions such as staff reductions and moving teaching of special-education classes to in-house instructors instead of contracting with Trumbull County.
He said cost-cutting measures are continuing this year, and the district will be losing roughly $200,000 in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds.
The ARRA funds have paid for after-school Intervention programs for the past two years to help students in grades three to eight prepare for the state achievement tests in math and reading.
Dohar and Cindy Mulgrew, Seaborn Elementary principal, are looking into the use of ARRA funds to purchase 10 to 15 iPad units for kindergarten students here at an anticipated cost of $8,000.
The iPads are “a unique concept about to start here soon,” Mulgrew said, and will be helpful to students who are having trouble reading.
Dohar and Mulgrew have visited Columbiana schools where they have the program already in place for three or four kindergarten classrooms.
They observed students all using their iPads with earphones on and reading at all levels, as suited each student.
A news release from the state Office of Budget and Management said Gov. John Kasich’s administration believes in a school-funding model that “directs funds into the classroom and away from administration and bureaucracy.
“Over the next year, the administration will develop a new approach to state support of education,” the news release states.
In the interim, a bridge formula will allocate state-foundation funding to school districts based on a district’s reliance on state support for education as measured by its property valuation per pupil and the number of students who reside within a district, it explains.