Alyssa Murphy is a mother of two children in the Hamden Public School system. The education system seems to be the last string to hold onto Hamden, Connecticut:
“If I didn’t have my kids in this school system, we’d be out of here [Hamden]. And to be honest, when they do get out of the school system and go to college, we’re out of here,” she said.
The biggest chunk of Hamden’s budget goes to the board of education. The troubles with the budget upsets many people in Hamden, but people like Murphy want to stay due to the great public school system.
Looking at the Hamden budget at large, the adopted budget for the 2020-2021 year seeks to gain $196,224,762 of revenue from taxes, 79% of the Mayor’s budget. According to the consensus bureau, the town is estimated to have about 60,556 residents.
What’s wrong with the budget?
Before breaking into the biggest spending categories for the town, it’s important to understand why Hamden has the highest debt per capita in the state of Connecticut.
On February 18th, Lauren Garrett posted to Facebook a long piece about “honest budgeting” and the necessity to have that in municipalities. Garret is a mother, wife and former councilwoman of Hamden.
“I need people to understand that the consequences of not using an honest budget are really severe and very long lasting,” Garrett said.
The difference between the amount budgeted by the council and the actual money that comes in for Hamden is called a variance. It’s important to have the same amount budgeted as the actual amount that comes in. For the past four years, that has been a negative number in the millions of dollars, with year 2020 totaling $7.6 million.
“It’s really disingenuous because if you have to balance the budget by using borrowed money, at the end of the year, that’s costing the town more. It’s just that nobody’s going to see it for a few years…That expense is going to come due,” she said.
She continued to push the notion that she wants citizens to know that fake revenue can have serious consequences.
“The council also said they were going to get $6 million from COVID, but they’re not….If every municipality got around $5 million from Congress, we’re talking thousands of trillions of dollars,” Garrett said.
Responses to Garrett
By press time, the office of the mayor was not able to comment at this time. An economist at Yale University, Christian McNamara, concurs and suggests that Hamden need to be careful about its budgeting.
“It is essential that Hamden adopt budgets that are based on realistic assessments of what we actually expect to achieve, informed by historical results,” McNamara said.
Hamden budget expert, Ann Altman, who has a Ph.D. in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale Univeristy, has done work all over the world, including Mongolia. She was the first woman to be elected and re-elected to the Chair of Planning and Zoning Commission in Hamden.
“They’ve always inflated revenues. And if you go to the town website, you can find that revenues and expenditures don’t equate. The revenue is rightfully been referred to as aspirational,” Altman said.
While Garrett’s analysis of the budget is not optimistic, Michael McGarry, director of Hamden’s Town Council, sees the situation differently. He points to the history of how the town came to find itself in the current financial straits.
“The financial outlook for the town five years down the line is pretty good,” he said. “We just have to change. We don’t have anyone new going into the pension. We have pension funding, which we’re funding as we go. So, it’s better. And I think that should be acknowledged, too.”
Inside Thoughts on the Hamden Education System ($91 Million Budget)
There are roughly 5,400 students in the public school system. This year, there are 5,327 students enrolled.
Per the Hamden Public School Board, the 2020-21 Adopted budget was $91 million. This is an $8 million increase from 2017. This is %39 of the town’s tax dollars, so it’s important to determine if it has been worth the money.
With these budgets increasing each year, it’s important to hear multiple opinions from people within it. A student at Quinnipiac/teacher in the Hamden public school system, Justin Ellis, 22, discusses how google meets is not good enough for the students during this pandemic, pushing hybrid and in-person classes.
Victoria Simiola, founder of this Facebook page, Hamden Residents for Change, served on Hamden’s Board of Education for 24 years. According to that Facebook page, Hamden is looking to create heterogeneous groupings of students in the middle school. This basically means that academic levels will be removed and students will be placed in the same classrooms, except for accelerated math. The purpose of this is to not single out students who are struggling.
Karlen Meinsen has lived in Hamden her whole life, serves on the Hamden Diversity Advisory Council, and has taught in New Haven for 30 years. She has four children, one being in Hamden Middle School. She is quite familiar with the new groupings.
“Predominantly black and brown children from Southern Hamden, a place of low socioeconomic levels, struggle in classes,” she said. “So the town is segregated with homogeneous classes. But that’s the segregation that happens within a school. That is not good. It’s not healthy. We are stopping the practice of grouping them by ability in entire classes. That’s what the heterogeneous grouping is for,” Meinsen said.
Some feel this would be difficult to accomplish though, like Victoria Simiola herself.
“You’ve got different learning styles. You do have kids with special education needs. They learn differently. So how do you expect the teacher to accommodate a class of 30 on all different levels?”
Parent Response
Alyssa Murphy, a mother to a Hamden student, gives a positive spin on Hamden’s education system. It’s important to see this side.
“As far as, like the education and the teachers, and you know, the principals and I have been so happy with the public school system here,” she said. “And the amount of AP classes that they offer at the high school is phenomenal. So all of that kind of stuff to prepare her for college…I am very satisfied.”
The Pension
The fourth major driving factor of the budget is the pension at $21.1 million and 11.4% of the budget. Altman expressed her concern over the pension.
“Union members paid in and they’re entitled to their pensions. you most put money into the pension. And year after year after year, if they didn’t do that, and since they were so far behind, they bonded the pension fund. Bonding pension funds has caused many towns to go under water.”
McGarry, director of the Hamden Council, says that the pension used to be Hamden’s biggest problem, but no longer.
“We are funding the pension at 100% for the first time. And that’s really good because the pension remains one of the town’s biggest issues, and really one of the biggest drivers of our budget in the difficulties and challenges that we have,” he said. Insinuating that the pension is no longer being funded via borrowing.
What makes the Hamden school system really shine?
Schools have proven to be one of the main reasons why people stay in Hamden. Kim Washington has been working in the public school system for 27 years and works in special education.
“I love Hamden to death. I’ve lived here for over 35 years. I respect everyone’s opinion because everyone is an individual and we all have our opinions,” she said. Washington expanded to an underrated factor of the town’s school success: Custodians.
“They are working overtime to keep our schools safe and clean,” she said. “They have played such an important role in our school system for our children, parents, and employees.”
