Schools Must Cut $1.4 Million in Proposed Budget

The Stratford Town Council last week passed a town budget that gave schools $1.4 million less than the Board of Education's requested $2.9 million increase in funding over the current fiscal year.

Now school officials must decide what to cut from their original proposal.

"[The allocation is] less than we hoped but not zero as other municipalities are facing," BOE Chairman Gavin Forrester said at a school board meeting Monday night. "I think they understood where we were ... unfortunately, as we know, economic limitiations..."

Forrester said the $1.5 million increase in funding covers labor increases and associated costs.

He said the Board of Ed's finance subcommittee will meet in mid-May "to make corrections and alterations [and] hammer out what programs will be affected by budget reductions."

The budget will be finalized in June, Forrester said.