Town Responds to BOE's FOIA Request

Earlier this week, at Monday's Board of Education (BOE) meeting, the board voted to submit a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the town for bank statements from a bank account containing the BOE's non-lapsing funds. During that meeting, Chair Sara Kelley said the information had been requested multiple times and had not been provided. She also said the BOE had asked if its CFO could have read-only access to the account, which was not granted.

The FOIA request was submitted by the time the Board of Finance (BOF) met on Thursday, and Stafford's CFO, Yana Abramovich, addressed the issue during the meeting. She said she felt this issue had been resolved in March, though she had not provided the bank statements, just the paper trail explaining why the money the BOE thinks is there was, in fact, not. It's all very confusing, but essentially, it seems former Superintendent of Schools, Steven A. Moccio, had used a spreadsheet showing the schools had money in the account that they could use to offset last year's budget increase. Still, that money had already been earmarked to help pay for a roof replacement. As such, that money is now gone, according to Abramovich. She also noted that, at some point, she stopped providing information because Kelley "kept asking the same questions."

This answer has not satisfied the BOE, and after another meeting where this issue was raised, Abramovich met with the school district's CFO, Vicky DeSantis, and showed her the paper trail in person. At Thursday night's meeting, Abramovich said, "The money that Chairwoman Kelley is looking for doesn't exist."

Abramovich also said that after conferring with the state's FOIA commissioner, she had compiled the bank statements and information regarding the various correspondence and meeting minutes in which decisions about how the money was to be spent were made. She planned to add all of this information to the meeting minutes for the June 5, 2025, special BOF meeting, making the information available to the public and the BOE. (Update: That information was posted to the town website on June 11, 2025.) Abramovich later said via email, "To be precise, I contacted an FOIA official to confirm whether posting the information publicly would fulfill the request, in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act. I want to make it clear that Ms. Kelley has no greater right to this information than any other resident of Stafford."*

You might wonder why the town won't let the school district see the statement for its account. Abramovich said that the town has "custodial control" over the bank account, which the municipality owns, and the BOE has "budgetary control." She noted that how this money is handled and spent is all governed by statutes, and audited by an outside agency annually.

"To provide additional context—if the BOE ends this fiscal year with unexpended funds, CGS § 10-248a (as amended) now allows municipalities to transfer up to 2% of the BOE’s unexpended budget appropriation into a non-lapsing account that the BOE may control directly for future educational purposes," Abramovich told me via email. "At the end of FY24, many Connecticut municipalities adopted best practices to comply with this change. While the BOE must formally request the transfer after the close of books and audit confirmation of the unexpended balance, the municipality retains the authority to approve it. In most cases, towns serve as fiscal agents, either holding the funds in a separate account or within the General Fund and issuing payments based on BOE authorization. This method ensures statutory compliance, fiscal oversight, and collaborative management between municipal finance and the BOE. It is the same process that was followed when the BOE expended the remaining $152,040 from their FY23-24 budget."**

*This was added at the request of Abramovich after the original article published.

**This paragraph was updated significantly with new input from Abramovich.