RIDGEFIELD — The Board of Education has approved $532,000 in cuts to its proposed $96.1 budget for next year, which along with health insurance savings will achieve the $1.1 million reduction ordered by the Board of Finance.

The Board of Finance reduced the schools’ request, which would have increased school spending by 3.73 percent, to $95 million, or a 2.55 percent increase, during budget deliberations earlier this month.

Acting Superintendent Robert Miller told school board members last week they would need to make $532,000 in cuts after negotiations with the district’s healthcare provider went about halfway toward meeting the needed $1.1 million reduction.

Healthcare costs have come down over $1 million since the beginning of the budget process, which Miller said is owing to decreasing claims made this year, slight changes to how the plan is managed and better data on projected costs.

“From the get-go, healthcare has been a continual process of going back to the healthcare provider, analyzing our actuals and what our history is this year,” Miller said. “A lot of credit goes to our healthcare consultant, who has been working very hard behind the scenes to try and bring these numbers down.”

Board members decided how to make the remaining $532,000 in cuts by choosing the most “low-risk” options from a list created by Miller and other department heads.

The largest cut was $144,000 to eliminate two school psychologist positions the board had proposed adding to the elementary and middle schools to help an increased number of students in “emotional crisis.”

Miller said administrators plan to explore whether psychologists are the best way to address the problem during the next budget cycle.

“The fact of the matter is, a lot of the request for the psychologist came from looking at a set of data and we arrived at that as a solution,” Miller said. “We owe it to ourselves to really analyze that need in the fall.”

Other reductions included $102,000 in technology, $69,000 in special education, $68,000 in furniture and $39,000 in facilities projects.

The reductions were largely made by eliminating new expenses — like a college and career center or a speaking event about school start times — and making small cuts across accounts that are under budget this year.

Miller said he feels more comfortable with this method than making large cuts to one account because funds can easily be shuffled to cover the reductions if need be.

“In the middle of the year, if we’re running short in a budget area and we need to find funds elsewhere, these are all individual items,” he said. “It’s things we could move around if we needed to.”

Board members said they were concerned about precedent set by some of the cuts, such as eliminating mileage payments for certain staff. They also worried about a $38,000 cut to the curriculum and instruction office and deferring some facility repairs.

“We were asked to try and keep things away from the classroom,” Board Chair Fran Walton said. “But the problem is everything in the budget has some relationship with the classroom.”

Risks for deferring the facility projects include potential flooding or malfunctions in the air conditioning and heating systems. The curriculum cut includes reducing curriculum writing, professional development and substitutes that would cover classes during those trainings.

“We’ve done it, but at what cost?” board member Sharon D’Orso said about the reduction plan.

aquinn@newstimes.com