Administrator FAQ

BackgroundWho Colchester's school administrators are

"Administration" in the school budget means two groups of certified administrators, plus the office staff who work for them (office staff are counted separately in the budget, not in the administrator line):

• Central office — the superintendent; the assistant superintendent; the director and assistant director of pupil services & special education; and the director of finance and operations. A human-resources coordinator and the executive assistants work alongside them as non-certified staff.
• School buildings — a principal and at least one assistant (or associate) principal at each of the four schools: Colchester Elementary (CES), Jack Jackter Intermediate (JJIS), William J. Johnston Middle School (WJJMS), and Bacon Academy (BA) — plus the athletic director at Bacon Academy.

Every certified administrator except the superintendent, assistant superintendent, and directors of pupil services and finance belongs to a union — the Colchester Association of School Administrators (CASA) — which covers "all personnel holding positions which require the Intermediate Administrator's certificate and whose administrative or supervisory duties equal 50% or more" of their time. The rest work under individual contracts approved by the Board of Education. District-wide, the span under those thirteen administrator FTE is roughly 250 certified educators and 175 non-certified staff — about 420 adults serving 2,080 students (staff FTE per the FY 2026-27 budget presentation; October 1, 2025 enrollment). Question 4 counts each building's share. As of August 2026 the district is led by an acting superintendent (Judy O'Meara, the CES principal) while the superintendent search proceeds.

A count note, because the two numbers on this page measure different things. The 13.0 FTE headline is the administrator line of the district's CPS Staffing History, which ends at FY 2022-23 and counts full-time-equivalents, not people. The roster above names 14 positions (5 central office, 9 in the buildings), plus the athletic director, because some assignments are part-time or shared: the district's own FY 2023-24 DRG snapshot records Bacon's building administration as 3.6 FTE rather than a whole number, the finance director's office has at times been budgeted as shared with the town, and positions added after FY 2022-23 (a school safety director was budgeted in FY 2025-26) are not in the staffing history at all. Where this page computes ratios and trends (Question 8), it uses the staffing history's FTE line and says so; where it counts positions building-by-building (Question 4), it uses the budget book's position tables.

Question 1Why is the superintendent's salary so high — and who sets it?

"Ms. Bouchard also asked why the Superintendent's salary was so high." Resident Deanna Bouchard, Board of Finance & Board of Education joint meeting, April 4, 2023 (minutes)

How oftenThe most-asked administrator question in the archive: at least six people across the 2023 and 2026 budget seasons — two residents at the April 2023 joint meeting, the Board of Finance in writing that same month ("Please clarify the rumors…"), and three commenters in February 2026.

The answer given at the meetings

In April 2023: "Mr. Sullivan spoke to his current contract and stated that it is comparable to other superintendents in DRG-D. Ms. Gignac gave data on area superintendent salaries that are comparable or higher than Mr. Sullivan's." On who sets it, in February 2026: the board "previously voted to authorize the Board Chair to negotiate the Superintendent's salary, consistent with past practice" (in June 2024, the chair and vice-chair). And as resident Jason LaChapelle noted in 2023, once executed "the superintendent's salary could not be lowered according to his contract" — mid-contract, compensation is a legal obligation.

Digging deeper: the full salary history, reconstructed

The budget books let the salary be traced line by line from FY 2018-19 (earlier books print no position detail):

Three things fall out of the series. First, the salary rose about 32% from 2019-20 to 2025-26 ($174,000 → $230,076), with most of the increase arriving in one step — the 2022 change of superintendents, when the contracted salary came in roughly 20% above the printed budget line. Second, the printed books lagged the signed contract: through FY 2022-23 the book showed $178,700 while the actual contract was $215,000, a gap only visible in the written Q&A — context for a resident's 2024 request that "the budget should include all salaries." Third, an August 2025 resident letter describing "a 3% raise in base salary, a 36% increase in retirement contributions, and total compensation over $260,000" matches the books on the raise (+3.4%); the retirement and total figures are not printed anywhere in the books and can't be checked from them.

On "comparable to DRG-D": most peer superintendent contracts sit with town clerks and aren't published online, so a full independent comparison table isn't possible from public web sources alone. The two verifiable 2026 area data points run at or above Colchester's figure — Bethel (≈3,160 students) hired a new superintendent at $230,000, and Lyme–Old Lyme Region 18 approved $261,249 plus a $27,728 annuity for 2026-27. Nationally, the AASA 2024-25 survey median is $158,721 (and $130,000 for districts of 1,000–2,999 students). So on the evidence available, Colchester's figure sits well above the national median and within the range of the two nearby 2026 contracts that are public — a comparison limited to those two data points, not a Connecticut-wide finding.

Question 2What does the assistant superintendent do — and why was the position created?

"Michelle Gilman thanked the Board for all the activities but has a concern about the assistant superintendent position. It has not been reviewed or discussed, how would it impact the budget and felt it should wait until a new superintendent has been hired." Public comment, BOE special meeting, June 14, 2022 — the night the position was created (minutes)

How oftenRaised in nearly every year of the position's existence: two objections the night of the June 2022 vote (a resident and the Board of Finance liaison), written Board of Finance questions in 2023, the superintendent's own June 2023 statement that he was "asked often" about the role, and a resident restructuring proposal targeting the position in 2026.

The answer given at the meetings

The board voted 4–2 on June 14, 2022 "to change Dr. Hewes' title to Assistant Superintendent with the same job description of the Director of Teaching and Learning plus other duties." A year later, Superintendent Sullivan — conceding he was "asked often" about the change and concerned about "a lack of understanding between the jobs" — called the two roles "necessary complementary" and the board unanimously approved a written job description: roughly 35 duties including the district's curriculum-review cycle across 13 subject areas, professional development and the evaluation system for all certified staff — a group of roughly 250 educators, against the staffing history's 233.8 teacher FTE plus administrators and other certificate-holders — a mandated-training and evaluation system for the district's roughly 175 non-certified staff, the state TEAM mentoring program for every new teacher, writing and managing the federal Consolidated and Perkins grants (and Title I–IV funds), serving as District Test Coordinator for all 2,080 students' state assessments, supervising the technology director and multilingual-learner coordinator, evaluating school administrators, and acting for the superintendent in their absence.

Digging deeper: what the job has actually cost, by year

The budget books show the position's whole financial history — including what the 2022 re-title did and didn't change:

The digging confirms the re-title's defenders on one point and its critics on another. In 2022 the change genuinely cost nothing — the salary stayed on the union director scale, and Colchester had employed a director-level curriculum administrator for decades before the title existed. But once the job moved to an individual contract (2023), it rose faster than the union scale it left: the union schedule's director column topped out at $163,507 in 2023-24, while the contracted position went from $160,519 to $178,020 in a single year and to roughly $188,000–$205,713 (depending which record you credit) by 2025-26 — an increase of 17–28% over two years, negotiated in executive session with only the motions public. Structurally, most similar-size DRG D districts staff the #2 job with the assistant-superintendent title; this site's restructuring-proposal review covers the director-vs-assistant-superintendent trade-offs in detail. On whether district-office leadership matters for students: the main research synthesis (Waters & Marzano, 2006 — 27 studies, 2,714 districts) found a modest positive correlation (r ≈ .24) between district-leadership practices and achievement, but it is correlational, based partly on self-reported surveys, and its underlying studies vary widely — evidence worth knowing, not proof either way.

Question 3What does the superintendent actually do?

"Mr. Rivers asked Superintendent Sullivan to explain how the position translates for better outcomes for students in the classroom as he feels there is a lack of understanding of what a superintendent and assistant superintendent do to facilitate outcomes for children in the classroom." Board of Education vice-chair Christopher Rivers, BOE meeting, June 13, 2023 (minutes)

How oftenRarely asked this plainly in public comment — the version quoted came from the board's own vice-chair. But the superintendent's statement the same night that he was "asked often" about the central-office roles, and his concern about "a lack of understanding," are the district's own record that the question circulated well beyond the minutes.

The answer given at the meetings

Sullivan's recorded answer: "there are a multitude of days that the Assistant Superintendent is working in the District modifying, creating and enhancing curriculum," and "the District needs an assistant superintendent who has the ability to evaluate administrators and hold them accountable." The district's published Central Office duty matrix lists the superintendent's own assignments: chief executive of the district; evaluation of the assistant superintendent, directors, and school administrators — the 13-FTE administrator corps of Question 8; school safety across four buildings; the district budget; hiring; and sign-off ("approvals of all") on state and federal reporting.

Digging deeper: the statute, and what happens when the chair is empty

The position is the one administrative job Connecticut districts cannot choose to go without. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 10-157 requires each board's schools to be under the supervision of a superintendent who "shall be the chief executive officer of the board," with certification confirmed by the state education commissioner — and it caps how long a district can run on an acting superintendent: up to one school year, extendable once with commissioner approval. That clock is directly relevant now: Colchester has been led by an acting superintendent since spring 2026, and the July 2026 adjusted budget carries a $41,760 acting-superintendent stipend alongside the still-budgeted superintendent line.

The clearest evidence of what the office absorbs is what happened when it emptied. In 2022 Colchester went through three superintendents (Burt's resignation, McDowell's interim term, Sullivan's hire); the record from those months shows the assistant superintendent simultaneously serving as acting principal of Bacon Academy (with a one-time $7,000 payment "for taking on the added responsibility"), the athletic director serving as interim dean of students, and the board paying for the churn in stipends and restructuring. And the ordinary span of the chair is itself a number: one chief executive answerable for roughly 420 staff FTE in four buildings (per the staffing history in Question 8), 2,080 students, and a budget that ran between $49.4 and $52.25 million across the FY 2026-27 cycle. The concrete year-round work product is also traceable: the several-hundred-page proposed budget book each winter, written answers to every board and public budget question (Question 10), negotiations with five bargaining units, personnel recommendations at nearly every meeting, and the state filings inventoried in Question 9.

Question 4What do principals and assistant principals do all day?

"Ms. Manfre asked about the possibility of reducing an Assistant Principal to 10-months instead of a full year which might help identify cost savings." Resident Sarah Manfre, BOE meeting, April 25, 2023 (minutes)

How oftenA fixture of cut seasons, in different forms each time: concern for the WJJMS assistant principal during the 2020 cuts, the 10-month suggestion above (2023), the debate over cutting a Bacon Academy administrator (2025), and a board member's request to detail the assistant principals' workload (2026).

The answer given at the meetings

When a board member asked in February 2026 about "the scope of administrative support at BA," the recorded answer: the two assistant principals handle supervision, campus safety, conflict resolution, investigations and discipline for roughly half the student body each; oversee more than 80 evening events a year on average 10-hour workdays; conduct over 600 observations, evaluations and meetings per year; and chair more than 200 special-education (PPT) and Section 504 meetings annually (Budget Workshop #2 minutes). The district's published duty tables enumerate the rest by name — the CES principal personally evaluates about 30 staff, the WJJMS principal 24 certified staff plus 17 shared paraprofessional evaluations — and when cutting a BA administrator was floated in 2025, the union president called it "disastrous" while the BA principal warned cuts "would severely limit their ability to perform their duties."

Digging deeper: the ratios, the legal floor, and the price of the alternative

First, the scale itself. "A principal and an assistant principal" is an abstraction until it is counted — so here is what each building's administrators actually supervise, from the school-by-school position tables of the district's own budget book and the October 1, 2025 enrollment report:

Teachers = teaching positions funded for 2025-26, general and special education combined, counted from the school-by-school position tables in the FY 2026-27 adjusted budget book (a few are part-time, so headcounts run slightly above FTE). "Other building staff" is the school's own paraeducators, related-service staff, nurses, office and security staff, and custodians. About 63 district special-education paraeducators and a centrally budgeted clinical team (psychologists, social workers, speech, OT/PT) also work inside these buildings, so the true adult count per building is higher than the row shows. Students are October 1, 2025 enrollments per school (enrollment report); Bacon's excludes 9 transition-academy students and 15 out-placed students. The report's Bacon slide is internally inconsistent: its headline reads 553 while its own grade columns (147, 140, 133, 143) total 563. The table uses 563, because only that figure reconciles with the report's stated district total of 2,080 — the other three schools' headlines match their grade columns exactly. Administrator counts are the FY 2025-26 budgeted lines — the July 2026 adjusted budget eliminates one of Bacon's three.

• What "evaluating teachers" means at this scale. State law requires every certified educator to be evaluated every year (Conn. Gen. Stat. § 10-151b), each on a cycle of goal-setting, observation, and end-of-year review. Spread across the rosters above, per the duty tables, each building administrator personally owns roughly 20–30 annual evaluation cycles — about 30 staff per CES administrator, half the grade 3–5 teaching staff per JJIS administrator, 24 certified staff plus 17 shared paraprofessional evaluations per WJJMS administrator, and whole departments per Bacon administrator — on top of the day's discipline, coverage, and meetings. Bacon's documented "600 observations, evaluations and meetings per year" for its two assistant principals is that requirement met in practice across a 62-teacher faculty: roughly three formal events per school day between them, every day of the 180-day year.
• The workload numbers are plausible against enrollment — and Colchester is mid-pack. Bacon Academy enrolls about 572 students (federal NCES count, 2024-25; the district's October 2025 report shows 563 — see the note under the table above). At the district's own DRG-snapshot count of 3.6 administrators, that is roughly one administrator per 160 students — between East Lyme High (890 students, 4.8 administrators ≈ 185 per admin) and Ledyard High (731 students, 5.2 ≈ 141 per admin). Nobody in the peer group runs a high school on one or two administrators at this scale.
• The 200+ PPT/504 meetings are not optional attendance. Federal special-education law (34 CFR 300.321(a)(4)) requires a district representative qualified to commit resources at every IEP meeting, and Section 504 imposes a parallel structure — chairing those meetings is a legal function, which is why it dominates the assistant principals' calendars.
• The credential is regulated too. Every principal and AP must hold Connecticut's Intermediate Administrator (092) certificate: a master's degree plus 18 further graduate credits, 50 school months of experience, an approved preparation program, and the state administrator test.
• What the research says principals are worth: the leading synthesis (Grissom, Egalite & Lindsay for the Wallace Foundation, 2021) estimates that moving from a below-average to an above-average principal adds nearly three months of learning per student per year — though Wallace itself now notes later work suggests "much more modest impacts." Cited for what it is: suggestive, contested, not district-specific.
• The 10-month idea, priced. Administrators work 260 days by contract; salary is per-diem at 1/260. Converting a Step-4 assistant high-school principal ($151,499 on the 2023-24 scale) to the 205-day version the board actually negotiated in June 2025 saves about $32,000 — real money, and about a fifth of the position. In July 2026 the adjusted budget went further and eliminated one BA assistant-principal line ($159,169) outright. The suggestion residents raised was, eventually, partially adopted — first as a shortened year, then as a cut.

Question 5When the budget is cut, what happens to administrator lines?

"She raised concerns that while teachers are being asked to make significant sacrifices, there would be no corresponding reduction in superintendent compensation or contributions to his 403(b). She questioned why teachers are being asked to bear the greatest financial burden while district leadership experiences little to no impact." A CES teacher, public comment, Superintendent's budget presentation, Feb. 18, 2026 (minutes)

How oftenThe dominant refrain of the 2025–26 budget seasons — at least five speakers, from "look in house at Central Office for savings" (March 2025) to the wage-freeze comments of February 2026 — echoed by two board members. Earlier budget crises drew the same demand in a different form: "remove new positions before existing positions" (2020).

The answer given at the meetings — and the recorded cuts

The district's actions across six budget crises: 2020 — HR coordinator position eliminated for a lower-paid assistant, facility supervisor postponed, central-office and superintendent professional development cut. 2022 — the $200,000 referendum cut absorbed partly by not replacing the central-office communications position ($41,191). 2023 — Director of Human Resources downgraded to a coordinator. 2024 — central-office reorganization, net savings ~$15,000. 2025 — a vacant BA assistant-principal position refilled at 205 days instead of 260. FY 2026-27 — "Central Office & Admin Salary Freezes" in the proposed budget, and the admin retreat and administrator professional development eliminated in the adopted round. When residents asked how the 2025 raises had been set given the health-fund shortfall, the recorded answer was that "decisions were made based on the information available at the time."

Digging deeper: what the books show on both counts

The freeze is real, line by line. The FY 2026-27 proposed budget book shows $0 change for the superintendent ($230,076), assistant superintendent ($188,227), director of finance ($153,777), HR coordinator, both senior executive-assistant lines, and the 403(b) pool; every building administrator's line is flat or lower. For scale: the prior year, the same eleven administrator lines rose about $56,600 combined. The July 2026 adjusted round then went beyond freezing — the finance-director line was cut $50,000 (to $103,777), one BA assistant principal was eliminated (−$159,169), and the superintendent's and assistant superintendent's professional-development lines went to zero. No document ever isolates the freeze's own dollar value; it sits inside a $696,767 bundle of February adjustments.

The books also support the central factual claim behind the criticism. The adopted FY 2025-26 budget book lists the superintendent at $222,525 and the assistant superintendent at $184,251 for 2025-26 — but the next cycle's books restate that same year at $230,076 and $188,227. Salaries recorded after adoption were higher than the adopted book, which is consistent with the February 2026 public comment that "offer letters" for central-office roles "received raises higher than those adopted." The books do not show how those figures were set, so the comment's explanation is not something they can confirm either way. An August 2025 resident letter put the superintendent's change at "a 3% raise… a 36% increase in retirement contributions, and total compensation over $260,000"; the books confirm the raise (+3.4%) and are silent on the rest. The same pattern appears earlier: through FY 2022-23 the book printed the superintendent at $178,700 while the actual signed contract was $215,000. Existing contracts legally bind mid-term pay (Question 1) — but the record shows the tension residents named is real: cuts landed on administration in every crisis year, and leadership pay still rose between adopted budgets and signed contracts. Both facts belong to the answer.

Question 6Why do administrators work 12 months when school runs 10?

"M. Millington … suggested reviewing 12-month positions, with discussions around possibly shifting some clerical roles to 10-month terms and reducing central office staffing in summer." Board member Michelle Millington, BOE special meeting, April 10, 2025 (minutes)

How oftenAsked twice, two years apart — a resident's 10-month assistant-principal suggestion in April 2023 (Question 4), and the board member's version above in April 2025.

The answer given at the meetings

The BA principal's recorded response in April 2025: "the summer months are critical for ordering and preparations," on top of an unfilled office vacancy already doubling up duties. The union contract defines every covered position as twelve months — "Work year, for all purposes, is defined as 260 days" — with 30 vacation days that must generally be taken when school is out.

Digging deeper: the math, and what the summer actually holds

Because administrator pay is contractually per-diem (1/260 of salary), the cost of the 12-month structure is precisely calculable: the extra ~55 days beyond a 205-day year cost about 21% of each salary — roughly $32,000 on a Step-4 assistant principal. That is the number the board actually captured when it negotiated the 205-day BA position in June 2025, and it is why the question matters at all. What fills those days is documented rather than asserted: the published duty tables put hiring (teacher resignations peak in summer), the master schedule, building projects, curriculum work and state-report filings in the non-student months, and the fiscal year itself turns over July 1 — the budget the administrators built all winter takes effect, purchase orders and openings included, while school is out. Central office runs year-round regardless: payroll, benefits, and 350+ annual registrations don't pause in July. The honest bottom line from the record: the 12-month default is a negotiated union term, not a law of nature — it can be, and once was, shortened position-by-position at a vacancy — and each such conversion buys about a fifth of a salary at the cost of whatever those 55 days held.

Question 7What does central office cost — and what do the support roles there do?

"Q: How much overall is CO allocated in your budget? A: In the 2023-2024 proposed budget $1,448,658.00 is allocated for the Central Office." Board of Finance written Q&A, April 2023 (FY 2023-24 budget-process compilation)

How oftenEach version asked once, in writing: the central-office total and full salary roster by the Board of Finance in April 2023, and the "what does the communications office professional do" question by the public in the 2022 budget season.

The answer given at the meetings

$1,448,658 of the ~$46.2 million proposed FY 2023-24 budget, with every central-office salary disclosed by name — superintendent $215,000; assistant superintendent $160,519; business director $120,000; accountant $87,800; executive assistants $67,000 and $56,722; HR assistant $52,645; finance associates $62,200 and $61,700. The one "what does this role do" question on record (the communications office professional, 2022) drew a detailed written answer — main phone line, crisis-communication team, press releases, volunteer approvals, 350+ registrations a year — though the district then eliminated that very position three months later to absorb a referendum cut, and a companion question about an outside communications contractor drew one sentence.

Digging deeper: the share is stable, ordinary — and newly harder to see

Recomputing central office as a share of each adopted budget, from the books' own location tables: 2.80% (FY 18-19, $1.14M of $40.5M) → 3.10% → 3.26% → 3.07% → 3.42% (FY 22-23, $1.44M of $42.0M) → ~3.1% (FY 23-24 proposed). Six years inside a band of half a percentage point: whatever else changed, central office did not eat a growing share of the budget through FY 2023-24. For a yardstick, U.S. districts nationally spend about 2% of current expenditure on general (district) administration and another 5.7% on school-building administration (NCES, 2020-21); Colchester's central-office figure — which mixes district administration with district-wide business functions — sits where a district its size would be expected to sit, though the definitions differ enough that the comparison is directional, not exact. Two records-keeping findings from the digging: the FY 23-24 documents restate the central-office certified/classified split three different ways (position reclassifications, not real changes — the totals roughly agree), and from FY 2025-26 the books stopped reporting Central Office as its own location, folding it into "System Wide" — so this six-year series cannot currently be extended, and a resident asking the 2023 question today would need the district to break the number out again.

The support roles' compliance load is documented in the duty tables: payroll and quarterly taxes for a workforce of roughly 420 FTE, W-2s and 1099s, Teachers' Retirement Board reporting, benefits and FMLA administration, insurance bidding, FOI requests, board agendas and minutes, Medicaid cost reports, IDEA grant maintenance-of-effort and excess-cost filings, state eGMS grant drawdowns, and DCF background checks for every hire.

Question 9How much of this work is required by law?

"…roles and responsibilities of staff at central office and the schools, staffing history, … district reference group (DRG) comparisons, security assessment, DRG D per pupil and median income, and state mandates." The justification materials the district compiled when its staffing was challenged, BOE emergency meeting, March 15, 2023 (minutes)

How oftenNot a question any resident has posed — the district assembled this material in March 2023, when the Board of Finance demanded its budget be justified. It answers a question that sits underneath most of the others.

The answer the district assembled

The district publishes a 2,500-line inventory of Title 10 state mandates with its budget materials: 180 school days and 900 instructional hours with an annual attestation to the State Board of Education, K-3 reading screening on approved assessments, the full mandated course list, uniform annual financial reporting, and the state data systems someone must feed. Its duty tables assign the named compliance hats: Title IX coordinator, McKinney-Vento coordinator, and FERPA custodian of records (the director of pupil services); District Test Coordinator and the educator-evaluation collections (the assistant superintendent); and the ED-series financial and staffing filings, IDEA compliance, and Medicaid cost reports (the finance office).

Digging deeper: the statutes, checked and corrected

Each mandated hat traces to a specific, verifiable law — and checking them turned up two citation corrections worth recording. The federal ones: an LEA representative at every IEP meeting (34 CFR 300.321(a)(4) — the legal floor under the 200+ meetings in Question 4); a designated Title IX coordinator in every district (34 CFR 106.8(a)); a designated homeless-student liaison (42 U.S.C. 11432(g)(1)(J)(ii)). The state ones: the superintendent requirement itself (Conn. Gen. Stat. § 10-157); school security and safety plans for each school, submitted annually to the state's emergency-services department — properly Conn. Gen. Stat. § 10-222m, though the district's own security regulation cites § 28-7, a general civil-preparedness statute; and the school-climate roles, where the statute the district's 2022 job descriptions relied on (§ 10-222k) was repealed effective July 1, 2025 and replaced by §§ 10-222dd–ff, which still require a district climate coordinator (the superintendent or an appointed administrator), a specialist in each school (the principal or a designee), and a committee per school. Administrator certification is itself a legal gate: the 092 certificate requires a master's degree plus 18 additional graduate credits, 50 school months of experience, an approved preparation program, and a state test.

The mandated hats also come with countable caseloads. The pupil-services director's designations sit on roughly 358 identified special-education students (the district's 2022 count) inside a special-education budget of $10.7 million (FY 2023-24) — and because federal law requires a district representative at every PPT, that is several hundred administrator-attended meetings a year as a legal minimum, before a single 504 plan or re-evaluation is added. The assistant superintendent's evaluation-system and test-coordination hats span all ~250 certified staff and all 2,080 students; the annual-evaluation requirement (Conn. Gen. Stat. § 10-151b) applies to every one of those educators, every year.

The honest caveat cuts the same way it always did: the law mandates functions and a handful of designations, but the only administrative position Connecticut requires outright is the superintendent. How many people carry the mandated hats, at what salaries, in which structure — those are the local choices the budget process decides.

Question 10Who decides how many administrators Colchester has?

"C. Rivers spoke to the savings that could be found in Central Office with some restructuring should go towards the maintenance budget." BOE budget workshop, March 9, 2024 (minutes)

How oftenNever asked outright — but every "cut central office" comment assumes an answer, and the board has debated its own authority over the structure at least twice (its 2022 legal orientation; a 2024 policy-committee recommendation to hand the org chart fully to the superintendent).

The answer in the governing documents

The Board of Education holds the legal power — its own legal training (Shipman & Goodwin, January 2022) lists "create, abolish, modify and maintain such positions … as may be necessary" and "determine the number, classification, duties and remuneration of employees" among its statutory powers. The superintendent designs the structure: board policy has the superintendent prepare the organization chart and job descriptions, and in 2024 the policy committee recommended deleting the org-chart policy entirely as "beyond the purview of the Board." Voters set only the total: state law (Conn. Gen. Stat. § 10-222) leaves allocation within the referendum-approved number "in the discretion of the board of education."

Digging deeper: watch one budget year run the whole machine

The FY 2026-27 cycle shows every lever pulled in sequence, with administrators' jobs moving at each step. November: administrators requested $52.95 million. February: the superintendent proposed $52.25 million — the cut list included "Central Office & Admin Salary Freezes." March: the board adopted $51.92 million, additionally cutting the admin retreat and administrator professional development. Then voters rejected the budget at referendum — twice — and by July the board's adjusted budget stood at $49.37 million, now cutting the finance-director line by $50,000, eliminating a BA assistant principal, and zeroing the superintendent's own professional development (the April presentation says $50.87 million; the adjusted budget books themselves print $49,368,807 — one of several unreconciled figures this page flags rather than smooths over). Meanwhile the pieces voters never see directly: the superintendent's contract was negotiated by the board chair and vice-chair under a June 2024 authorization, and every position-level change ran through executive session with only the motions public. That is the honest answer to "who decides": voters bound the total, the board chose the categories, the superintendent named the positions, and the contracts constrained the timing — no single actor, and no step optional.

Where residents get answers on the record: the district accepts written budget questions each season and answers them in writing (the Budget Questions series quoted throughout this page), and public comment at budget workshops is recorded in the minutes.

Look it up yourselfWhere every document on this page lives

Every source quoted here is a public document. This site's Document Library mirrors more than 3,000 of them — board minutes back to 2019, budget books, contracts, job descriptions, and the district's published duty tables — each as a full-text, searchable page with a link to the original. The district's own budget-process pages publish the current year's "Roles and Responsibilities" tables, staffing history, and mandate inventory each season, and board meeting records are on BoardDocs. Peer superintendent contracts are typically filed with each town's clerk (a 2017 state law requires it) — retrievable by any resident, though not by automated tools, which is why Question 1's peer table is thinner than this site would like.