NORWICH – Programming, extracurricular activities, personnel, overtime and staff development are all areas which will be considered as Norwich looks to cut more than $825,225 in expenses from next year’s budget in response to state aid cuts.

At a meeting of the district’s board of education last Wednesday, Superintendent Gerard O’Sullivan outlined his plan of attack for dealing with the reduction, which represents a 3.88 percent decrease from what they are slated to receive in the current academic year. The amount is equivalent to roughly 2.17 percent of the district’s total $37,873,070 budget.

While the district struggles to make ends meet with the diminished aid, they are also faced with rising costs in other areas – particularly contractual wage increases, health care costs and pension contributions. At a board meeting last month, the superintendent estimated that if spending was left unchecked, it would mean a 4.4 percent increase in the total budget. Coupled with the aid reduction, that would mean a roughly $1.6 million deficit for the district. Both he and the board agreed that passing this along to taxpayers was not an option, hence the need to focus even more closely on cutting expenses.

“We’re being faced with some very difficult budget decisions,” said O’Sullivan, as he walked the board through areas he’d identified for consideration.

The first area he addressed was programming, where he said savings could be realized and efficiencies gained by re-evaluating scheduling at the high school. This would include increasing minimum class sizes for core subject area classes to 15, and elective classes to 10.

“It’s going to have some obvious impact on programs,” said O’Sullivan, as well as the options available to students. But according to the superintendent the district can simply not afford to keep running elective classes with 2 or 3 students.

In addition, the district will look at aligning itself more closely with state requirements when it comes to instruction time. O’Sullivan cited science labs as an example, explaining that students currently receive 3,600 minutes of lab time which is three times the state requirement of 1,200 minutes. Bringing these into alignment would free up additional teacher contact time, which could be redirected to either additional course offerings or AIS. It would also likely reduce laboratory related expenses.

Phasing out the district’s French language program is another option the superintendent is investigating, a move which would leave Spanish as the only foreign language option.

“Traditionally, (there have been) very low numbers in our French program,” said O’Sullivan.

If the program were to be eliminated, he explained that the district would “look to support students who are currently taking French” but would “cutoff the pipeline” to the program starting with next year’s incoming seventh graders. He distributed a chart to the board, illustrating how this would effect staffing and section requirements over the next few years.

There would also be a move to tighten up scheduling as a whole, and make it more efficient. But O’Sullivan warned that as these changes are made, they will create stress in other areas. Changes in scheduling at the high school will have an impact on Elementary specials like music and art, because teachers are shared between buildings for these programs.

“We’re not going to have the same flexibility,” the superintendent explained.

The district will also be evaluating its extracurricular offerings, including clubs, organizations and athletics, O’Sullivan reported, as there are contractual stipends attached to each.