Superintendent Paul Vicinus’ proposed budget for the West Hartford Public Schools’ 2025-2026 academic year includes a $14.4 million (7.2%) overall increase with special education costs, including tuition and transportation, salaries, and medical expenses as major drivers. 

By Ronni Newton

The West Hartford Board of Education will spend the next four weeks carefully scrutinizing specific details of the proposed 2025-26 school budget at workshops, and will also hold a public hearing and participate in several community conversations along with the Town Council before making recommendations and voting to adopt the budget on Tuesday April 1.

The proposed 2025-26 budget presented by Superintendent Paul Vicinus on Tuesday night totals $215,226,800, representing an overall increase of $14,422,944 (7.2%) over the $200,803,856 budget adopted for the 2024-25 academic year.

The major budget drivers are similar to what the district has faced over the past several years – increases in the cost of out-of-district tuition to support special education needs, transportation, salary increases required by collective bargaining agreements, and this year an estimated 10% increase in medical insurance premiums. A projected – and growing – shortfall in the state’s reimbursement of special education excess has a greater impact this year.

The roll-forward budget – looking at keeping the exact same programs and services and the exact same number of people next year as this year – would result in a $16 million (8.0%) increase, driven by salary increases that are part of negotiated collective bargaining agreements, benefit costs, contractual transportation costs, services for students with special needs including out-of-district placement, and inflation.

Vicinus’ adjustments to that roll forward budget represent a net reduction of $1,55,175 (0.8%), including an overall reduction in 8.2 positions. That number is impacted by enrollment shifts, special education program delivery, and a reduction in non-classroom positions and overhead.

Before providing an overview, Vicinus reminded the Board that adoption of the budget “is certainly one of the most critical responsibilities” they have in support of the critical mission of educating the town’s students. And, he noted, West Hartford being rated the No. 1 community in the state in which to live by Niche is strongly impacted by the A-plus rating of the town’s schools. In her annual State of the Town Address on Monday evening, Mayor Shari Cantor said the public schools “are a source of immense pride and a primary reason so many young families choose to call West Hartford home,” and Vicinus referenced Cantor’s comments, noting that the schools provide the foundation for the continued success of the community for generations to come.

Who are we?

Today, that generation is the 9,135 students in the district, Vicinus said.

“One in four live in a home where a language other than English is spoken … and one in 10 are English language learners themselves,” Vicinus said. In addition, he noted that nearly one in two are students of color, nearly one in three are eligible for free or reduced lunch, and one in five receive some type of special education service.

“The diversity is dramatic,” he said, and the district’s culturally rich demographic is “at the core of the programming that we do.”

 

 

Amid the diversity is success.

Vicinus shared just a few bullet points, noting that the town’s elementary schools are all ranked in the top 25% statewide with most in the top 10%, Conard and Hall are both “Gold Medal” schools in the Advanced Placement program and Hall was awarded for its AP testing matching the school’s overall demographics, and athletic participation is well above the state average and there have been multiple state championships.

On March 28, West Hartford’s Unified Sports program will be one of three programs nationally recognized as “Unified Champions” by Special Olympics during a ceremony hosted by ESPN.

“When we think about fine and performing arts … the talent that is showcased, the awards that our fine and performing arts bring home are too numerous to mention,” Vicinus said.

Vicinus noted a “significant and incredible point of pride” in the national recognition of the district’s post-secondary program, which serves as a model for districts across the country.

“This is what we do, the legacy that we try to uphold,” he said.

How do we do it? 

While in the 1970s and 1980s West Hartford was among the top districts in the state in terms of per pupil expenditure, in 2015, the district was in the lowest 10% in terms of per pupil spending statewide.

Last year, with a per pupil cost of $20,706, the district was 100th out of 169, which “puts us just above the lowest third in terms of per pupil expenditure. It’s a value,” said Vicinus.

If West Hartford’s per pupil expenditure was at the state median, it would add $9.2 million to the budget, and if it was at the average of the DRG B (the district reference group that includes Farmington Valley towns as well as Greenwich, Trumbull, Newtown, Cheshire, and others), the budget would be $5.2 million higher.

While those theoretical figures may be hard to envision, Vicinus also provided information from a consumer perspective that has direct impact on families’ own budgets. In the past year, based on in-state tuition costs, West Hartford families have saved $2.7 million in college course credits by participating in the AP and Early College Experience (ECE) programs in the high schools. “That’s something that’s significant,” he said.

 

“We understand that salary and benefits are the largest driver of our budget,” said Vicinus, this year representing 81% of the proposed budget, which is a point down from the percentage last year. “The only way for us to control costs or lower costs is to lower our number of employees.”

The proposed budget reduces staffing by 8.2 FTE positions, and that’s on top of last year’s reduction of 10 positions and 21.5 positions which had been funded by the ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief grants) that were not continued last year – an overall reduction of 40 positions over the past two years.

“We will have a stricter adherence to our class size guidelines” for the coming year, Vicinus said. One of the non-classroom savings he noted will be the elimination of an extra security guard at Duffy Elementary School that will no longer be needed once the ventilation and air conditioning installation project is completed this summer.

Enrollment changes warrant a reduction of classroom sections and positions in the elementary schools (five fewer classrooms and 1.3 fewer full-time equivalent (FTE) unified arts and world language positions), but an increase of 4.0 FTE positions as this year’s fifth grade cohort heads to middle school and replaces what is currently a smaller eighth grade class. A reduction of 4.0 FTE positions at the high schools is expected.

The 10% proposed increase in medical costs is also significant, and is based on estimated premium costs for participation in the State Partnership Plan. The actual rates will be available in the next quarter.

The fastest growing pieces of the pie are tuition and transportation costs – the latter for based on contractual costs for transportation to the town’s schools as well as for out-of-district placements.

The costs related to special education have continued to rise, while at the same time statewide the overall excess cost reimbursement funding has remained flat, resulting in a lower percentage reimbursement to districts across the state as the pool of funds is distributed.

While there had been celebration of $40 million in additional funding passed by the legislature last week to assist with a shortfall in the current year’s budget  – which will likely be realized despite the governor’s line-item veto – and while the governor has committed to an extra $40 million in excess cost reimbursement in the 2026-27 fiscal year, “currently there is no funding plan for the excess cost reimbursement in the 2025-26 year,” Vicinus said.

Out-of-district tuition expenses are estimated at nearly $3.7 million, an increase of 39.6% driven by the number of outplacements, increasing tuition rates, and the reimbursement shortfall. Transportation, which includes the contract for regular buses as well as out-of-district special education busing, is budgeted to increase by $1.3 million (12.2%).

It’s not the number of special education students receiving the out-of-district services that’s having a huge impact, Vicinus said, but rather the skyrocketing cost of those services at private facilities. While as many students as possible are served in-district – and because West Hartford is larger than other districts it is able to operate certain programs such as STRIVE – there is an obligation to provide needed services even if they are unavailable in town. There is talk at the state level of implementing controls on tuition, but that won’t be in time to impact the upcoming academic year.

The state is supposed to reimburse districts for excess costs of providing special education once those costs reach 4.5 times the district’s per pupil expenditure, which would be once the costs exceed $93,177 per student. The last time the state provided the reimbursement at a level of 100% of its obligation was for the 2007-08 and 2008-09 school years, Vicinus said. In the following years, West Hartford received 80 cents on the dollar, but then the state moved to a tiered system based on wealth of the district, and West Hartford’s percentage reimbursement has been steadily dropping through the 60-cent range.

West Hartford has the sixth highest overall reimbursement shortfall in the state, Vicinus said. Based on the current tiered system and funding of the overall excess cost reimbursement pool, for 2025-26, the West Hartford Public Schools budget projects excess cost reimbursement from the state in the 50-cent range in the upcoming year.

“That shortfall is one of the most significant drivers that’s outside of our control,” Vicinus said. There are other towns facing the same type of situation, and while budgets are in various stages of review throughout the state, he said one district is proposing an 11.2% overall increase driven by special education costs, which is a crisis.

What’s next?

Board members will hold workshops over the next several weeks where they will be able to review each line item in detail and recommend changes to the budget.

The community is invited to share comments at the public hearing (March 26, 7 p.m., in Town Hall Room 314), as well as via email at [email protected]. The detailed budget is available on the West Hartford Public Schools website.

Town Manager Rick Ledwith will incorporate the Board of Education budget into his overall proposed 2025-26 general fund budget which will be presented to the Town Council next Tuesday, March 11, at 7:30 p.m.

While the Board of Education decides what to spend, it is ultimately up to the Town Council to allocate the funding. The Council, however, cannot alter specific line items but only the overall district budget.

In addition to the workshops and public hearing listed below, this year the Town Council and Board of Education will host a listening tour, providing an additional opportunity for community conversation regarding the budget. Those sessions are scheduled for Wednesday, March 12 at 3:30 p.m. at the Bishops Corner Senior Center, as well as on Monday, March 31, at 8:30 a.m. at the Faxon Library and 4 p.m. at the Noah Webster Library.