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<\/picture><\/div>New Fairfield High School\u2019s new building on December 5, 2023. The school district\u2019s $53.6 million plan for the upcoming fiscal year would raise spending by about $2.3 million \u2014 or 4.4% \u2014 over the current year\u2019s budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/span>H John Voorhees III\/Hearst Connecticut Media<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n New Fairfield High School\u2019s new building on December 5, 2023. The school district\u2019s $53.6 million plan for the upcoming fiscal year would raise spending by about $2.3 million \u2014 or 4.4% \u2014 over the current year\u2019s budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/span>H John Voorhees III\/Hearst Connecticut Media<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n NEW FAIRFIELD\u00a0\u2014 The school district\u2019s $53.6 million financial plan for the upcoming fiscal year would raise spending by about $2.3 million\u00a0\u2014 or 4.4%\u00a0\u2014 over the current year\u2019s $51.3 million budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Superintendent Kenneth Craw<\/a> shared the New Fairfield<\/a> schools spending request for the upcoming year with the Board of Education<\/a> last month. The drivers that are raising costs in the request include employee salaries, special education and student transportation, he said. \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But the superintendent also proposed new investments in the school district.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Craw outlined a series of capital investments, which would total $615,000. One of the proposals calls for partitioning the middle school\u2019s cafeteria into three music classrooms at a cost of $150,000. Another proposal seeks $75,000 for a feasibility study to assess replacing the middle school roof, its air handling system and related mechanical equipment.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Repartitioning the cafeteria with sound buffering and other partitions would allow the district to move orchestra teachers out of small basement classrooms \u201cwhere they don\u2019t have a space to really put instruments,\u201d Craw said,\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Educators were able to move out of hallways and into a classroom a year earlier. \u201cBut now we\u2019re going to get them into a space that makes sense,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Also in the middle school, Craw proposed enhancing the district\u2019s world language program by adding a full-time Spanish teacher to restore daily language instruction for seventh and eighth graders.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The superintendent described world language as \u201ca core subject\u00a0\u2014 just like English, math, social studies and science. Like math, you need to have it on a daily basis in order to have that practice.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It has been 15 years since New Fairfield had daily world language instruction in the seventh and eighth grades, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Two years ago, the school district introduced full-year French and Spanish to sixth grade students.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The investment would be cost-neutral, due to a restructuring of enrichment sources and the elimination of two paraprofessional educator positions, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The cost to maintain a baseline budget, continuing existing programs and services as they are currently run, would increase the budget by $1.6 million, or 3.15%, Craw said. Factoring in unanticipated costs, namely special education-related expenses, would raise the increase to 4.4%, he said. Those costs \u2014 including out-of-district tuition, a proposed increase in the contingency fund and paraprofessional salary increases \u2014 would add up to $660,110.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Craw proposed raising the special education contingency fund by $42,000 to $150,000 to cover unanticipated referrals to out-of-district services and transportation costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n On the capital budget side, the middle school\u2019s leaking roof needs to be replaced, which is why Craw said he proposed a feasibility study.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe have to plan for that roof to be replaced in the summer of FY27, because now some of the leaks have caused damage within the building,\u201d he said. A \u201cphased-in\u201d approach for that replacement would make sense, Craw said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In addition to the roof, the middle school\u2019s heating ventilation and cooling system need to be replaced and other items, such as doors, windows and fire suppression systems, will need to be looked at as well, Craw said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt\u2019s something we have to start now and think forward,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The budget largely continues investments pursued in the current budget<\/a>. Craw, when he presented that proposal<\/a>, emphasized the need to serve the district\u2019s growing numbers of multilingual learners and special education students and to support New Fairfield\u2019s growing orchestra and theater programs.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Last month, his message was similar. He urged board members to not just think about the financial figures in the budget request.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt all comes back to … the students we\u2019re trying to support, and we have to think about the decisions we make in those lenses as well, not just the fiscal ones,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Board of Education will take up the proposal when it meets Feb. 5, before forwarding the request to town leaders.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.newstimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" New Fairfield High School\u2019s new building on December 5, 2023. The school district\u2019s $53.6 million plan for the upcoming fiscal year would raise spending by about $2.3 million \u2014 or 4.4% \u2014 over the current year\u2019s budget.\u00a0 H John Voorhees III\/Hearst Connecticut Media New Fairfield High School\u2019s new building on December 5, 2023. The school […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2267989,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[439193],"class_list":["post-2267988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-news-times"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/New-Fairfield-schools-propose-536M-budget-plan-for-2026-27.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2267988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2267988"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2267988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2267990,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2267988\/revisions\/2267990"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2267989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2267988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2267988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2267988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"New](\"https:\/\/s.hdnux.com\/photos\/01\/63\/07\/42\/30177423\/3\/80x0.jpg)