Dr. David Hopson
As we move through another budget season with all of our constituencies vying for their individual needs, it’s important to recognize that consequences result from every decision, however small the initial choice appears. While there are many reasons for this, the underlying tenant is that so many aspects of our lives and institutions are closely linked to the point that a minor change in one area is likely to have both intended and unintended consequences in other areas. Thus, a decision on the part of the school district to require a program be self-sustaining in revenue also results in families having to change their daily lives to deal with the resulting impact.
An example of that is the district’s wrap-around programs—programs that take care of elementary students both before and after the official school day. The program started at Littleville because that school had the largest number of elementary students in the district. In starting this program, it was determined that because this was an additional service not directly related to the formal educational process, the program would have to be self-sustaining, i.e., the amount charged to parents for wrap around services would have to cover all of its expenses. This worked so well at Littleville that we decided to try the program in Chester so that all of our elementary parents and students had an equal opportunity to participate in this type of before and after-school programming.
Despite many attempts over the years to increase the number of students taking part in this program in Chester, the program could not serve enough students to sustain itself. We have therefore decided to end this program at the end of this school year. This decision was not easy on many levels including the knowledge that this will create one more difference in opportunities between the two elementary schools, the realization that this would make some families have to change their childcare plans, and the recognition that this was one more service that will be cut ultimately because it is so difficult to pass budgets in this district. However, offset against these negatives was the realization that the program was losing significant amounts of money due to low enrollment and was not sustainable over time without either making the parents pay much more for the service, or offsetting costs by allocating budget resources to a program used by only a small number of families.
As the current proposed budget for next year is significantly less than the district’s budget from five, or even ten years ago, it didn’t seem a financially or educationally astute decision to cut even more educational services to the district as a whole in order to provide a wrap-around program for Chester Elementary School. It also doesn’t seem fair (or practical) to ask the parents in one school to pay two to three times more than the other school for the same type of program.
I’ve been asked whether the district can provide bussing from Chester to Littleville so students can participate in the wrap-around program there. Once again, we are unable to do this because it would result in a significant increase in bussing costs that would need to be passed to the towns or require further educational cuts. Parents may request that their children school choice to Littleville to take advantage of wrap-around but need to know that, under our current procedures, those families would also have to provide their own transportation for their children, thereby further impacting the overall costs to parents and changing the way in which those families operate on a day-to-day basis.
Thus, the intentional decision years ago to not increase the budget to provide a wrap-around program did work but, years later, the unintentional impact on families in the district is now coming to fruition. The fact that there may be years between any decision and future unintended consequences needs to be kept in mind as we progress through this budget cycle. Decisions made simply due to the immediate financial interests of our towns may very well have negative consequences for our families and students that we’re not aware of now and may also have a long-term negative impact on the towns themselves in terms of property values, the desirability of living in the hilltowns, and the success of our students as they move on to life after graduation.
