Iassogna: No Going Backward

In the midst of budget hearings, several residents have called for a return to a simpler school system.

But that is impossible.

Specifically, one senior at last Saturday's Board of Finance hearing remembered attending school during the Great Depression and asked the Board of Finance why the school budget keeps increasing. Another recommended more volunteering and finding alternate methods of funding education.

Both Cindy Katske and Schools Supt. Ralph Iassogna had an answer on Wednesday.

"I do appreciate his position and it is interesting to hear about what it was like the good old days," said Katske, a tri-president of the Parent Teacher Student Association. "It's really about a global economy."

"With all of the changes in the world, with video games, I think [children's] brains operate a little differently. Different students learn differently," she said.

Gone are the days when children learn by rote, she said. Today education teaches children to get the correct answer and explain how they solved the problem, speakers at hearing said. The students learn critical thinking and reasoning, with the assistance of technology.

Students must also train to compete with other countries' students in the global marketplace, which requires knowledge of current technology.

"I don't think you can compare" today's educational system with yesterday's, she said.

She added that PTA members volunteer and hold fundraisers.

"We set up envelope stuffing sessions several times a year. It used to be done by a secretary," she said. "We're happy to do it."

"We get students to help out too," she added.

Iassogna said budget increases are inevitable with special education mandates, salaries and benefits and student athletics under Title IX. 

"Education has changed significantly just like other professions," he said. "The dictates given to us have expanded immensely."

Some critics of the proposed education budget target administrators, many of whom earn six-figure salaries.

But Iassogna said Trumbull is "threadbare" with administrators compared to other school districts in the DRG, or district reference group. Trumbull's group includes Greenwich, Fairfield and Monroe. Monroe's district is facing a proposed 0.71 percent education budget increase. Fairfield's proposed increase is 1.4 percent.

Iassogna himself said he has refused raises for two years and given money back in a third.

That figure comes from a state Education Department study conducted several years ago, but there is no recent study, he added.

Katske said while parents monitor the number of administrators closely, Trumbull High School is one of the state's larger facilities. "I don't see a lot of redundancy and extraneous administrators," she said.

They meet once a week with the superintendent, she added. "We're not easy on him. We do our research. We're constantly challenging the superintendent on those. We're always looking for efficiencies too."

The president thinks the first selectman's proposed increase of 2.375 percent is not enough to maintain current services. There is a funding cliff caused by federal funds drying up that is nearly two percent of the school board-approved 5.38 percent increase, she said.

With that two percent gone, the remaining 0.375 percent is "too little," she said. "There has to be a middle ground. I'm hoping the Board of Finance will come to it."

Asked what she would cut, she said "a little bit of everything," but put academic and athletic programs on the bottom of her list.

The Board of Finance meets March 14 to approve a total budget that will be forwarded to the Town Council for review.