New London ― A proposed $50.8 million school board budget proposal was alternately characterized as barely adequate to meet district needs and impractically high during a Wednesday night City Council Finance Committee meeting.

Much of the evening session was spent discussing the Board of Education’s 2024-25 spending plan and its 9.83%, or $4.5 million increase – figures Mayor Michael Passero later called inaccurately low.

In defending the plan, Superintendent Cynthia Ritchie highlighted a series of new cost drivers, including the imminent loss of $10.9 million in federal pandemic relief funding, contractual salary increases, unfunded state mandates and new student special education costs.

But she said the biggest culprit in this year’s budget jump can be traced to years of “deficit funding,” in which general fund appropriations failed to keep up with the rise in inflationary costs.

“We have not kept up with inflation,” Ritchie said. “Therefore, that’s why you’re seeing such a big percentage of an ask.”

Ritchie said the cost of operating the district’s pre-K programming at the B.P. Learned Mission Early Childhood Center alone accounts for $2.5 million, or 4.8%, of this year’s increase.

She noted the district must also cover more than $500,000 of city services in its budget, including landscaping, bus parking contracts and crossing guard and private school nurse salaries.

In crafting the spending plan, Ritchie said district leaders reduced 61 full-time staff positions, though when questioned by committee member Reona Dyess she clarified only nine employees were left unemployed. Other staff reductions were made largely by “bumping down” worker to other jobs.

Board of Education President Elaine Maynard-Adams asked committee members to view education funding as the “great equalizer.” She said in her almost 40 years as a homeowner in the city, her taxes have supported both successes and “abject failures.”

“But it’s incumbent on us to speak for those without voices, on behalf of those more than 3,000 students and their families,” Maynard-Adams said. “I ask you to show your belief in public education by funding us at a level where we can continue the wonderful work we do.”

Passero, who earlier this month presented a $104 million city and school budget that cut $3.5 million from the board’s plan, said contrary to Ritchie’s figures, the board’s budget would translate to a 22% increase.

He said the state and grant funding that compliments the taxpayer portion of the school budget funding is not expected to increase in the coming year, leaving taxpayers footing a larger portion of the cost.

“That’s not possible or practical,” he said, attributing the loss of school pandemic funding and a damaging city property revaluation creating an “absolute perfect storm.”

Passero, while calling the board’s full funding request an impossibility, vowed to work with members to find deficit-reduction options.

The board and mayor’s budget plans in the coming weeks will undergo further scrutiny ― and possible modifications ― by the city’s Board of Finance and the full City Council before a May approval vote.

The Finance Committee was still discussing the board’s budget at press time.

j.penney@theday.com