Danbury City Council Ad Hoc Education Budget Meeting - April 16, 2026
Danbury City Council Ad Hoc Education Budget Committee Meeting
On April 16, 2026, the Danbury City Council's ad hoc committee on the education budget met to review the public schools' proposed budget for fiscal year 2026-2027. Superintendent Kara Casemiro and CFO Mike Weaver presented a $175 million general fund request, a 1.75% increase ($2.99 million) over the current year. The presentation covered enrollment trends, staffing, benefit restructuring, surplus remediation, and future risks. Committee members and ex-officio councilors asked detailed questions about the budget's assumptions and sustainability.
Discussion Items
- Budget Overview: The Board of Education is requesting $175 million, reflecting a $2.99 million increase (1.75%). The budget is framed as a "reset year" focusing on stabilizing finances after audits revealed surplus issues from prior over-budgeting on vacancies and benefits.
- Enrollment and Demographics: Enrollment has declined from a peak of 12,223 in 2023-24 to approximately 11,397, with the decrease concentrated among multilingual learners. Superintendent Casemiro attributed this partly to community dynamics and federal immigration rhetoric, noting that many students may still be in the community but not attending school. She advised against reducing staffing in response, as the decline provides only modest class-size relief.
- Staffing and Vacancies: The district employs 1,846 staff. Due to chronic vacancies (approximately $6 million in unfilled positions at a snapshot), the district is hedging by budgeting benefits for only a portion of open positions, saving $2.4 million in health and $400,000 in dental costs. An additional $1.7 million is set aside for agency staff for mandated special education roles.
- Benefit Reduction: A $6.79 million reduction in benefits was achieved by: removing a 5% fluctuation margin from actuary projections, reducing headcount in benefit calculations, and leveraging a well-funded health reserve (maxed out at statutory limits). CFO Weaver explained that the reserve provides a safety net if health claims exceed projections.
- Grants and Funding Risks: The district relies on $56 million in grants (25% of total operating expenses). Alliance grant funding is flat, and federal formula funding may decline due to enrollment dips. Superintendent Casemiro noted that the ECS formula changes being discussed at the state level may not provide a significant boost because Danbury's enrollment decline puts it below the hold-harmless threshold.
- Contractual Increases: $5.4 million in contractual salary increases are included, along with $2.7 million for transportation (new buses for DHS West expansion) and $1.5 million for special education services and professional fees.
- Reserves and Surplus: The district has accumulated roughly $9 million in surpluses from prior years (mostly from unfilled positions). While 2% can be retained by the district under new legislation, the remainder returns to the city. Councilman Coelho asked why the district didn't use reserves to keep the budget flat; Superintendent Casemiro explained that the reserve is a rainy-day fund and that using it would increase the base for future budgets.
Key Outcomes
- The committee voted unanimously (all ayes) to approve the motion, presumably to recommend the $175 million budget to the full City Council. The exact motion was not specified in the transcript, but the chair called for a vote and declared it carried.
- The committee committed to continued discussions on facilities and cost-sharing between the city and schools, scheduled for fall 2026.
- Superintendent Casemiro and CFO Weaver emphasized that this budget represents a transparent, data-driven approach after correcting past budgeting practices, including projecting from actual expenditures rather than budget-to-budget.
Meeting Transcript
Thank you all. I am it is 6 p.m. I am calling the City Council ad hoc for the education budget to order. I am confirming, I'm confirming a quorum. Up here, I am Holly Robinson. I'm the chair of this committee. To my left is Councilwoman Andrea Gardner, Councilwoman Cheryl Wallace Smith, Councilman Joseph Britton, and Councilwoman Candice Fay. I believe we have some ex officio members, City Councilmember Lou Giordano, City Councilmember Mike Flanagan, and I believe I saw City Councilman Mike Henry. Is there anyone I missed? Oh, sorry, Billy McAllister, City Council member back there. And from the mayor's office, Mayor Roberto Alves, Taylor O'Brien, and from finance team, Dan Garrick and Joanne Stark, and then Dr. Casemiro, thank you for joining us. I'll give you an opportunity to introduce your team when we get there. Oh, and I'm sorry, the Board of Ed chair in the back, Louisa Britton and other Board of Ed members. Thank you for attending. I apologize for not calling you out. So I just want to get this rolling a little bit because I know there's a lot to go over in a short amount of time. So just for first of all, let me kick this off. I want to thank everybody for attending. The presentation, our structure will basically be the uh the public schools presentation, follow-up with some QA by committee members, um, hopefully an opportunity for the other council members and attendance to ask some questions if time allows, um, and then additional discussion among the committee as needed. Um, our role tonight is to help the entire council understand the education budget that's before us. Um if this could be framed topically, I think we're trying to reconcile numbers by separating and understanding the one-time costs versus recurring costs. Um, understanding how prior surplus issues, um, sorry, I have to mention that, you know it'll come up. Um, surplus issues uh were being connected and corrected structurally going forward. And then how we are hoping to identify the risks and obligations already visible for next year's budget so we don't talk about a cliff again. Um my goal is about clarity and confidence. I know that there might be some um uh focus on trying to relitigate prior years or or prior mistakes, and I think that if we can focus on lessons learned from that instead of relitigating it, it would be really helpful. Um so I just wanna thank again, Dr. Casemiro. I I know that you kind of came into this at a time where things were a little messy, so I appreciate you and and Mike Weaver for sticking it out. Um I also want to do a shout out to Joanne Stirk who has done an amazing amount of work working closely with Mike Weaver to kind of piece together the city budget needs along with the Danbury Public Schools um open door policy. So that was a big shift, I think from years past. So I want to thank you for that. Um I know we were still chasing perfection, but let's be proud of the progress we've made so far. With that framing, I will invite the superintendent and please feel free to introduce your team and any board members I missed to uh present to us. Thank you. So thank you for all of that. Uh I would like to introduce my team. Of course, I'm uh Kara Casimiro Superintendent. This is Mike Weaver, our CFO. Um, I want to say thank you to uh Mayor Alves and his team. It's been a wonderful uh relationship so far this year. We're very excited to present our budget and also to uh talk about some of the things that we're working on. Um we're here tonight with our uh many of our cabinet members uh and central office staff as well as our board, we are a board chair. If I can go through and name them all, we might be here for a little bit, but I want to thank everybody here uh for attending. There's been a lot of broad support uh for the work ahead. That's been a lot of difficult work uh and challenging work to uh correct some of the issues that we have been facing. I think when uh we first took over, Mike and I. Um I'm not sure that we quite knew how deep some of those issues ran, but we have been spending a great deal of time um addressing some of those issues in great partnership with the city for sure. Joanne especially has been a godsend um and through the audit process, especially has helped to shed light on on best practice and ways forward um and has been a great educator for our team as well.
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