PROSPECT — Regional School District 16 officials have proposed a $45.2 million budget, a 2.9% increase over current year's spending, which if approved would be the biggest increase in eight years.
Residents in the district, which serves students in Beacon Falls and Prospect, will vote on the budget at the annual meeting May 5 at 7 p.m. at Long River Middle School, 38 Columbia Ave. in Prospect.
Region 16 Superintendent Michael Yamin told residents at an April 9 hearing that although the proposed budget marks the largest increase in almost a decade, over the past eight years the district's budgets have gone up by about 9% collectively while the average increase for districts across the state was 24%.
"Education is financed through taxes, real estate taxes, property taxes and it's tough but if you were in another school district, you would have realized 15% more increases over the last eight years," Yamin said. "We've really been fiscally responsible but as you know, just going to the grocery store, everything you buy has doubled. It's really difficult today."
Yamin said some of areas driving the increase include salaries, health care, special education, out-of-district placement and electricity. He said the Woodland Regional High School's monthly electric bill has jumped from about $17,000 to roughly $27,000.
Region 16 Director of Business Operations Anthony DiLeone said for both towns, Education Cost Sharing funds went down slightly which has an affect on the overall school budget.
The proposed school budget is a $712,122 or 3.2% increase for Prospect and a $583,227 or a 5.3% increase for Beacon Falls, DiLeone said.
Beacon Falls Finance Manager Natasha Nau said the proposed school budget has put a large financial strain on the town as town officials are trying to keep the town budget as level as possible for taxpayers.
“The school budget has the capability to raise the tax rate by about three-fourths to a mill,” Nau said. One mill equals $1 for each $1,000 in assessed property value. The current tax rate for Beacon Falls is 29.83 mills.
Nau said the increase to the town represents 12 new students for Beacon Falls although they’ve had a steady decline in enrollment. “This the first time enrollment has had a shift in our direction,” Nau said. “Ours was decreasing while Prospect was increasing. That has shifted a little bit.”
Beacon Falls is expected to have 35% of students in the district for 2025-26 academic year which is a 0.26% increase from the current year. Prospect is expected to have 65% of the students in the next academic year, or a 0.26% decrease from the current year, DiLeone said.
“The town budget would’ve been closer to flat if it wasn’t for Region 16,” Nau said. “They’re increase is sizeable.”
The grand list for Beacon Falls has gone down 0.1% or $630,934 for a 2024 grand list of 640,142,504. Town officials are expecting a 0.63 mill increase to 30.46 mills.
Prospect Mayor Robert Chatfield said town has completed a re-evaluation which is prompting a decrease in the mill rate. The Prospect 2024 grand list went up by about $291 million to $1.22 billion.
“The grand list went up considerably,” Chatfield said. “The grand list was a shock to many people.”
The town’s current tax rate is 31.14 mills and Chatfield expects the mill rate to go down once the town budget is voted on May 1.
However, Chatfield said he hasn’t yet taken into account the Region 16 budget side to the town. Chatfield said he does think the Region 16 budget proposal is going to impact the town budget and the mill rate.
Chatfield and Beacon Falls First Selectman Gerard Smith both asked the school board at the school budget hearing to make any attempts to trim the budget. However the school board added a reading specialist at the end of the hearing which raised the budget further initially going from 2.79% to 2.97% or from an initial $1.2 million to $1.3 million increase once school officials put a reading specialist back into the budget
"We believe in developing the whole student in Region 16, academically, culturally, behaviorally. We want to expose them to something," Yamin said. "Even if we create a group or a club that only has 10 students in it, those are 10 students who are buying into something. They're not going straight home after school. They're involved. If kids are engaged, they're going to preform better."
A few parents at the hearing shared concerns about the elimination of a fifth-grade teaching position at Laurel Ledge Elementary School. Shannon Spence, who has a fourth-grader at Laurel Ledge, urged the school board to keep three fifth-grade teachers at the school.
"The impacts of COVID on the development of these children are still present and removing a teacher will only set them back rather than continue to make forward progress on the challenges they have experienced," Spence said.
The school board, however, declined to return the additional fifth-grade teaching position back into the budget.
"This budget is what we need to be successful," Yamin said. "Of course it'd be nice to say hey, we're not going to have any cuts and we're going to have all our class sizes at 15 students. That'd be great. That's not realistic."