Melissa Bailey Photo
Reggie Mayo starred as a Malloy invitee Wednesday.
As Gov. Dannel P. Malloy launches the Year of School Reform, he announced he plans to send an extra $3.8 million to New Haven Public Schools — though half of that would go to charter schools. That didn’t make local officials happy.
The news came Wednesday, as New Haven officials joined legislators at the state Capitol for Malloy’s annual budget address.
In some ways, New Haven starred in the speech. The city wasn’t mentioned by name. But the goals behind the city’s two-year-old reform effort were echoed in Malloy’s call for school change, which served as a main centerpiece of his address. Malloy has been rolling out pieces of his reform initiative this week, much of it inspired by New Haven.
New Haven Schools Superintendent Reggie Mayo and his school reform czar, Garth Harries (pictured), were two of just a few school district officials invited to attend the speech under the 12 chandeliers of the great House chambers.
In the governor’s speech, Harries noted, Malloy outlined reforms that would follow New Haven’s efforts to revamp the way teachers and principals are graded, tier schools and tackle teacher tenure.
“What I hear in that message is a lot of support” for New Haven, Harries said — “moral, policy and financial.”
Malloy announced $128 million in new education spending, including an extra $50 million through the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) grant, the main vehicle for funding public schools. Click here to read his speech and click here to view the budget documents.
After the applause subsided, Mayor John DeStefano asked whether the dollars would match the rhetoric.
New Haven Public Schools would receive $3.8 million in extra ECS money under Malloy’s proposed FY2013 budget, an increase of 2.7 percent, or $218 per pupil.
About half of that would go to New Haven’s charter schools. That’s because Malloy proposed requiring public school districts to send charter schools $1,000 per attending pupilr.
The state predicts there will be 1,813 charter seats in New Haven next year, costing the district $1.8 million. That leaves another $2 million for district schools.
DeStefano called that arrangement “inequitable.” He questioned why a district of 20,000 should get the same amount of extra funding as a district a tenth that size.
“I’m trying to understand the equity or logic of that,” DeStefano said. “I don’t see that as what appears at first blush as a strong endorsement of New Haven’s school reform.”
“I appreciate that the mayor would like more money,” responded state budget chief Benjamin Barnes (pictured), reached after the speech. But he called the arrangement fair.
The state proposes paying $4.7 million for the city’s four charter schools in FY2013 to educate 1,800 kids, Barnes said — and $146 million for New Haven’s traditional schools, which have about 10 times more students.
“The City of New Haven has close to 10 percent of its student body” at charter schools, “being educated at essentially no cost to the city,” Barnes said. “We think $1,000 per student is a modest cost.”
Charter schools are currently funded at $9,400 per pupil by the state, revenue that’s supplemented by private donations.
Barnes proposes giving charters an extra $1,600 per pupil in state funding — then asking districts to pay another $1,000 to bring them up to $12,000. The move would end a years-long inequity in how charter schools get paid, he argued.
The increase would bring charters on par with the $12,000 per pupil “foundation” which is the basis of ECS funding for traditional school districts, Barnes said.
Most districts won’t lose money from the new charter funding setup, Barnes added: In all but one of the 130 school districts that are getting more money from ECS, the extra dollars are greater than the new cost of paying for charter schools.
Barnes proposed a few minor changes to the ECS formula that he said would help cities like New Haven: The poverty level will be judged by the number of kids enrolled in the state HUSKY A health insurance plan instead of those enrolled in Free and Reduced Price Lunch programs (a lower number). And students in bilingual programs will be included in the Limited English Proficient category, a factor in ECS funding.
Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney of New Haven said he supports the additional payments to charters, which have been depending on private grants to pay for kids’ educations. In some cases, those grants are due to expire, leaving the charters vulnerable, he said.
Patrick Riccards, the new CEO of the New Haven-based education watchdog group ConnCAN, said Mayor DeStefano is right that the ECS funding formula is broken — but he said that doesn’t mean charters shouldn’t get their fair share. He argued that the state is already paying cities for students who leave to go to charter schools, because the state has pledged not to drop ECS funding when a student leaves the district. The ECS payments are based on years-old population counts that don’t reflect the number of kids in the district, he said.
That said, Riccards argued, “New Haven is probably the last community that needs to be talking about more money” from the state. He said New Haven has done well by ECS compared to other towns. If anything, he said, New Haven should expect to pay more for charter schools in the future, not less.
New Haven Superintendent Mayo said he is “not too happy” about sharing the $3.8 million in extra ECS money with charter schools. Districts haven’t seen an increase in ECS funding in five years, he noted.
A couple million dollars won’t even take care of negotiated salary increases at the public schools next year, Mayo said. He said he’s preparing to ask the Board of Aldermen for a $5 million increase in its general fund budget.
However, Mayo said he was pleased New Haven landed in the spotlight Wednesday.
After the governor’s speech, he entertained questions from the Connecticut Post and the Hartford Courant about how New Haven is leading the way in school reform.
Mayo said he came Wednesday at the invitation of Malloy and his new education commissioner, Stefan Pryor, whom he called a “close friend.” Pryor worked for Mayo building a community schools program while Pryor was a student at Yale Law School, Mayo said.
Pryor (pictured), whom Malloy recently brought on board to spearhead his statewide reform drive, Wednesday called New Haven a leader for the state.
“New Haven has undergone a series of reforms that are part of the inspiration for our efforts,” Pryor said. While the state’s framework isn’t exactly congruent with New Haven’s teacher evaluation system, New Haven’s version served as a “terrific reference point for us” in crafting a statewide proposal based on student performance, Pryor said.
He said the state seeks to emulate the “spirit” of New Haven’s reform efforts, in that it represents “collaboration rather than confrontation,” and “partnership rather than dispute” between management and labor.
Besides the extra ECS dollars, the state is opening a pot of $4.5 million to support district innovations toward school reform.
“It’s hard not to think that the school reform efforts in New Haven don’t put them in an extremely good position to be one of the innovating districts that might be able to achieve those funds,” said budget chief Barnes.
“Our goal is to help districts like New Haven take it to the next level,” said Pryor.