Wednesday, January 07, 2009

School budget & student activity fees

The Board of Ed is scheduled to begin its annual dog'n'pony show budget process tomorrow night. Anyone happen to know where it will be? The budget meetings are usually at one of the schools other than Humiston.

And on the topic of school budgets... from CCM Magazine:

The West Haven Board of Education, responding to budget pressures, has adopted a policy for selling space to advertisers at the school ice rink and at the sports complex where many school teams play.

All the income from the ads – a projected $6,000 at the ice rink and between $15,000 and $20,000 at the Fitzgerald Sports Complex – will be used to support activities “above and beyond” normal, recurring expenses, according to the new policy.


Personally, I don't have a problem with some sort of fee - say $25 / sport. But I'm hesitant about getting into a situation where only some families can afford to have their kids participate in an activity.

Tim White

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

From the cheshire direct home page

Thursday 1/8/2009
7:30 p.m. - Council Chambers - Board of Education
7:30 p.m. - Room 207/209 - Human Services Comm.

Anonymous said...

Tim,
there are a few things to look into regarding high school sports. The first is the auditing of the "fund" that all the sport fundraiser money goes into....and due to the expenses involved in some of the sports- kids are put into the uncomfortable/unfortunate position of not having the funds needed for:extra team clothing, camps kids are expected to attend, uniform costs,team meals etc...You might think how much can it be? It adds up fast....my daughters fall sport has: uniform,sweats,summer camp,summer workout fee(huh)?,fundraisers that parents get stuck paying.....

Anonymous said...

Fees would contribute such a small part to the budget. I will not even figure that out. The administration of the fee would cost more than the actual money that will be generated. This is a ploy by the BOE to get the parents to the meetiings. Give me a break. There are many more ways to reduce spending without charging these kids the fees. Get your thinking caps on and come up with some new ideas please.

Anonymous said...

Business advertising fees or user fees paid by individual students is an issue which helps the BOE and its superintendent steer budget discussions from important basics to mere trivialities. Let's face it folks, our teachers seem to be receiving about the largest guaranteed annual pay raises of any group in the Northeast, bar none.

It's time to figure out how to take back the ridiculous pay raises just granted. Ops, almost forgot, this is the Land of Never Ending Increasing Money Supply. No recession (depression) will slow down the spending and taxing of and town residents by elected local officials and town employees.

Anonymous said...

I hope the Town Council fixes the BOE blunder of backdooring the public after they left the meeting. What snakes to do that and make an unpopular $1.1 million dollar reduction that the people would have booed on tv. The guy that got shafted the worst was Florio. He worked hard on his proposal and these guys just cut it for the sake of a number. Lets get to what this is really about though. The BOE wants the teachers to take a pay freeze for the 09-10 school year. While the public may think that teachers are not willing to do this I believe the silent majority would in order for everyone to keep their jobs. To bad we have big mouths with an agenda representing our teachers.