This month, Greenwich Public Schools budget-related disinformation and public anxiety have reached a fever pitch. It’s all good for the political junkies who relish any fight, but it’s really bad for our community.
Recently, BoE and BET members asked me to take a look at the 2025/26 GPS Budget. The bloat and mismanagement was quite shocking. I came to a BET budget hearing and heard parent after parent stand up and say things that we know are patently false.
The important question
Who is responsible for misleading parents? Why would they upset parents when it is clear that so much misinformation erodes public trust and fuels panic?
There are easy workable solutions to maintaining one of the best school systems anywhere while avoiding runaway tax increases turning Greenwich into Westchester. Parents and taxpayers need to ask their elected officials to knock it off and focus on families.
Why might you listen to anything a parent like me has to say on the subject?
Well, I served on the BoE and completed 12 school budgets with multiple superintendents. When I was BoE Chairman, our budget passed with the full support of the BET and had zero cuts in the RTM.
You should also know, I’ve often found myself at odds with others in local government. That’s because I ask questions others avoid. I read every line of the budget. I hold administrators accountable. I follow the contract language, not just the press release. I don’t seek consensus for its own sake—I pursue what’s best for students and families. Those habits haven’t made me popular, but they’ve made me effective. I’ve earned respect from parents, taxpayers, and even critics who value results over rhetoric. Whether or not you like the messenger, the message at least is accurate.
Here is an honest way out of gridlock and back to a hopeful path forward.
Some Basic and Important Facts About Greenwich Schools
Here are a few things that we all agree on as substantiated facts.
For a long time, Greenwich Schools had stable enrollment, academic achievement was very slowly improving, and school budgets grew to keep schools competitive.
Now, K-12 enrollment is down by nearly 500 kids from 2019 levels. COVID moves are long past and enrollment is not recovering
Academic achievement in English and Math is stagnant or down. 75% of students meet state standards. 25% don’t.
Greenwich teachers maintain the highest salaries in Connecticut through successive generously negotiated contracts.
Despite a significantly smaller number of students, BoE has maintained the total number of educational staff and added new employees and programs.
Superintendent Jones is doubling and tripling the size of public pre-school.
Collectively, this has caused per-pupil spending (how everyone measures) to skyrocket.
The 5% increase being requested is the highest increase request in over ten years.
Said simply, Superintendent Jones has absorbed any reasonable efficiencies from a smaller school system and is asking in addition to that the highest proposed budget increase in more than a decade.
Hyperbole Doesn’t Help
We all know hyperbole—exaggerated claims meant to provoke strong emotional responses, distort facts, or create urgency around an issue— does not help but unfortunately, it works.
In any high school government class, a student will invariably learn the old trick: “when faced with a public works budget cut, shout about stopping snow plowing of streets or firing policemen…it works every time.” Superintendent Jones has demonstrated twice previously that she is very good at this brand of politics.
My direct experience with Superintendent Jones is that she thrives on chaos and conflict: magnifying an issue often with false or incomplete information, advancing only extreme solutions, and vilifying anyone who thinks otherwise.
It’s the oldest trick in the Government Bureaucracy 101 Playbook.
This is why Superintendent Jones won’t like my fact-based analysis of her budget and the solutions in plain sight.
How to Meet Taxpayer Requirements and Fully Fund Greenwich Schools
The 2025-26 GPS Budget can absolutely be adjusted while protecting academic classrooms.
Here’s how:
1. Manage Teacher Absenteeism at the State of Connecticut Average
Greenwich Teachers are contracted to work 187 days and are entitled to 15 sick, not personal, days.
According to the State of Connecticut, Greenwich teacher absenteeism is nearly double all other districts in Connecticut. Managing GPS teacher absenteeism to the Connecticut average would recover more than 9,000 substitute days.
Proper HR management to the existing GEA contract recovers $1.4 million in substitute teacher expense.
2. Manage Teacher Hiring Per BoE’s Negotiated Contract
Greenwich offers the highest teacher compensation in the state. Entry level salary for 2025-26 will be $60,426 with growth to $136,241.
GPS officials testified to BET that GPS is not strictly following the negotiated GEA Contract Salary Schedule but routinely skips over the entry levels and hires at the middle of the scale.
The difference between entry level and mid-level in 2025-26 will be $29,152. If half to all the replaced positions were hired per scale, GPS could avoid between $758k and $1.5 million in salary expense.
3. Halt Expansion of Public Pre-K
Under Federal law, public school systems are required to provide free Pre-K for children with identified learning disabilities. Greenwich also expands required Pre-K to non-special education children.
Connecticut recommends a student ratio of 1-to-1 learning-disabled and non-disabled kids. Superintendent Jones has doubled the program well beyond this ratio, effectively backing Greenwich into a universal pre-K program.
Pre-K classrooms operate with two to three times the staff-to-student ratio compared to K-12 classrooms. Reducing the expansion could save up to $300k per classroom.
4. Suspend “New Initiatives”
Superintendent Jones has requested between $500K and $1.0 million for new initiatives, pilots, or programs. Postponing these initiatives until FY 2026–27 or later would be fiscally prudent under budget constraints.
5. Get Academic Resources to 2019 PreCOVID Levels
Since 2019 Pre-COVID, classroom teachers and pure academic staff have increased from 1,010 to 1,030 employees despite shrinking enrollment of 500 students.
GPS has required fewer elementary classrooms without any change to classroom size. Meanwhile, GPS has dramatically increased the number of special academic resources by 45 positions like Teacher Interventionists. These additional support staff have not improved academic performance.
Reducing headcount from 2024 level of 1,030 to 2019 level of 1,010 saves between $2.0 and $2.7 million.
Total savings from these actions alone would be between $5.0 million and $7.2 million. These actions can be taken without changing the current student class size policy or eliminating or reducing any existing academic programs of study while guaranteeing a student resource per pupil significantly higher than 2019 levels.
Reaction
I presented three of these potential budget solves at the BET hearing. My comments were met with opposition from audience members, including teacher union representatives.
I expected a backlash or retort from the PTA, but none came.
I expected Superintendent Jones to refute these facts and suggestions. She didn’t.
Kathleen Stowe, a corporate CFO and long-time BoE member, testified the BoE “had scrubbed the budget and could not find any savings.”
Yet within days of that very hearing, the BoE CFO was quietly talking to Town Hall officials, unsolicited, about accommodating a $2 million reduction in the budget increase.
So draw your own conclusion about how much the schools budget should increase this year, but whatever you do, ignore the hysteria and disinformation coming from Havemeyer and DTC Headquarters. Let’s stop the hyperbole and start prioritizing students and their classrooms.
Peter Sherr
