Fairfield Board Of Selectmen Restores $2 Million To Education Budget

FAIRFIELD, CT — The Board of Selectmen on Monday approved a spending plan for Fairfield of $381,964,286 for the 2025-26 fiscal year, sending the budget to the Board of Finance and Representative Town Meeting for review and a vote this spring.

The proposed budget restores $2 million that was cut from the Board of Education's funding request, but still leaves $1.9 in cuts for to school spending.

"The school budget is driven by the needs of the children and how many children are in our schools," said Selectwoman Christine Vitale said in a statement. "If there can be a cost savings in buses or transporting children that can then be applied to resources to better educate children, I think we should look at them. There may well be potential in shared Town and school services if the Town and school administrations are committed to doing the work to find them."

Monday's vote was 2-1, with First Selectman Bill Gerber and Vitale, both Democrats, voting in favor, and Republican Selectwoman Brenda Kupchick voting against it.

"I hate cutting the education budget, but in my position now, I have to look at the whole town," Gerber said during the meeting. "Where we are right now is a compromise."

The Board of Education requested $234,923,226 for 2025-26, or nearly 6.7 percent above the current year's allocation. Gerber's proposed budget shaved that down by $3.9 million, $2 million of which the board restored on Monday.

"I have never supported a cut to a school budget, and I was uncomfortable with the $3.9 million in cuts," Gerber said in a statement. "But this is a challenging year with minimal grand list growth and the Board of Education presented a budget with one of the largest proposed increases in dollar terms in Town history. Affordability is a concern for all of our families. There are people in Town who are housing and food insecure."

Contractural obligations for school district employees baked in an increase in education spending of nearly 4.5 percent above the current year's allocation.

In explaining her decision not to vote in favor of the budget, Kupchick said that spending plan was based on "a lot of assumptions," and she hopes that the Board of Finance can find ways to pare down the town-side of the budget to allow for the Board of Education to receive the additional funding that was cut.

"I felt that the budget was rushed, and wasn't quite ready for prime time," Kupchick said at the meeting.

According to the Gerber's administration, the restored $2 million was backed up by offsets in the town's side of the budget:

First was moving $928k in maintenance projects currently in the operating budget to the Capital Plan for bonding, bringing proposed cuts to $3.9 million. Additional offsets include:

• Adding $1.1 million to the drawdown to the Active Employee Benefits Fund
• Adjusting the reserve from uncollected taxes to $3.35 million; the collection rate was moved from 98.96 percent to 99.01 percent, matching the prior year figure
• Increasing supplemental motor vehicle assessment assumption from $112 million to $113 million
• Increasing the grand list projection by $32 million. This adjustment was made with the change to the motor vehicle depreciation schedule, adding $921k in bottom line revenue.

"Providing an excellent education for our children is always one of my top priorities and compensation for our teachers is not in question," Gerber said. "I don’t have control over what the Board of Education actually does, but there are some things I hope they review. We’ve reduced the cuts to $1.9 million, and we must now look to the leadership at the Board of Education to make carefully considered decisions."

To view video of Monday's Board of Selectmen meeting, click here.