OLD LYME – Voters in Lyme and Old Lyme will be asked to weigh the implications of a relatively steep increase in education spending now that the Region 18 Board of Education’s proposed $39.7 million budget is on its way to voters.
The district school board on Monday voted unanimously to set a May 5 district budget meeting prior to the May 6 referendum. The vote followed a 10 minute public hearing with a presentation from Superintendent of Schools Ian Neviaser during which no residents spoke.
The public silence was a departure from previous meetings that drew a cacophony of concern from members of the school community regarding the cut of a music teacher at Mile Creek School that they said would affect music department staffing at all levels.
The proposed budget represents an increase of $2.7 million, or 7.39%, over the current spending plan.
District budget documents show that Old Lyme would be responsible for $31.51 million of the budget, while Lyme would pay $6.96 million. Both towns are billed by the regional school district based on enrollment.
That’s a proposed increase in Old Lyme of $1.99 million, or 6.7%, and in Lyme of $299,504, or 4.5%.
The figure comes from calculating the average number of students over the course of the current school year based on enrollment data from Oct. 1, 2024 and April 1, 2025.
Neviaser in a phone interview this week attributed the bulk of the proposed budget increase to debt that is coming due on the extensive renovation project in all the district’s schools except Lyme-Old Lyme High School.
The project involves heating and ventilation system work in the four buildings, plus the addition of new classrooms at Mile Creek School. Voters in late 2022 authorized spending up to $57.5 million on the project.
Of the proposed budget’s $2.7 million increase, $1.8 million is attributable to debt payments on the renovation project.
“What I want to remind people is, yes, we have a 7.39% increase, but 4.7% of that is in debt service alone. So the operating budget is really only increasing 2.69%, which is exceptionally low if you look at surrounding districts,” he said.
Proposed school board increases in shoreline districts range from 2.5% in Madison to 6.72% in East Lyme. But the East Lyme Board of Finance last week slashed that town’s proposed $4 million education increase by $1.5 million, leaving it up to the school board – as required by state statute – to figure out where the cuts will come from.
In the Lyme-Old Lyme schools’ budget proposal, special education spending is up $726,721 over the current year, employee benefits are up $448,485, salaries for certified staff members are up $278,654 and transportation costs are up $164,234.
Neviaser said the increase in special education costs is driven by more students who need to be placed in programs outside the district to meet their needs. There are four students requiring outplacements in the coming year compared to one student when the current budget was approved.
There are currently 180 kindergarten through grade 12 students with disabilities in the district compared to 162 in 2020-21, according to budget documents.
The proposed budget includes maintenance and improvements to district facilities totaling $359,200 for a sound system in the high school auditorium, lighting in the middle school auditorium, replacement of the preschool playground and paving of the sidewalk in front of the middle school.
Other staffing reductions include turning the high school assistant principal position into a ten-month position rather than a full-year position and reducing middle school education staffing by one position.
The certified staffing cuts in total amount to the equivalent of just over three full time positions.
Neviaser during the public hearing pointed to district budgets going back five years, including the proposed 7.39 increase, that combine for an average increase of 2.73% per year. The second highest jump during that time period was 3% in the budget approved last year. On the opposite end, the budget decreased 0.1% in 2022-23.
But he also included historical data to illustrate that the impact of the renovation project will continue.
“Just to remind you, anytime we take on new debt service it drives the budget up, especially in the first few years,” he said.
When debt came due on the last round of elementary school renovations in 2000-01, budget increases hovered around 10% for the first two years and 8% in the third.
This time around, he emphasized increases won’t be as extreme because the district will spend about $17 million less than what was projected when the project was put out to referendum due to grant funding and good interest rates.
This is the link to the budget for 2025-2026: https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1744118792/region18/szig0qere0j3tpp9butj/2025-2026_Budget_Book.pdf
It’s more than a little telling that in 2025 our school board is sharing budget details in a pdf, rather than in an actual usable format like a spreadsheet.
It’s also worth noting that the charts they include are often long on color and short on meaning (and brutal on the eyes): check out the gem of a graph on page 31 that is theoretically about principaland interest payments. I feel bad for anyone in the district who is trying to get meaning from this page — and if they are colorblind? Forget about it.
It’s also worth noting that, in addition to not sharing information via spreadsheets and using charts that look like they were created by an angry squirrel that stole some crayons, the pdf has been largely rendered as an image, as opposed to rendering text as text and graphics as graphics.
This might seem like a minor point, except for anyone who accesses information using a screen reader. I did some basic testing and using a few different screenreading tools the budget pdf shared by the district is largely inaccessible.
This likely doesn’t violate the ADA or accessibility laws, but it certainly violates the spirit of these requirements, and it sends a clear message about how this district and school board value inclusion and transparency.
A quick look at the 2024-2025 budget shows the same problem: a needlessly inaccessible document.
The fact that basic accessibility is such a blind spot amond district staff and school board members — in that no one apparently saw fit to fix this simple, easily avoidable issue — speaks volumes.