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Mayor Elicker (at the mic) in Hartford on Monday.
(Hartford) Mayor Justin Elicker and Supt. Madeline Negrón made the trip to the state’s capital Monday — to stand alongside mayors and superintendents from Bridgeport, Stamford, Waterbury, and Hartford and deliver a collective call for state government to up its public education funding by $545 million.
That plea came from the five mayors and five superintendents of Connecticut’s largest cities during a joint press conference at the state’s capitol building in Hartford.
It took place just a few days after the Connecticut General Assembly kicked off its latest full legislative session, and was in line with recommendations from a bipartisan group of municipal education advocates known as the “119K Commission.” The press conference was the latest in a statewide push by municipal leaders and education advocates for an increase in state aid to city school systems.
The city and school district leaders who gathered on Monday, including Elicker and Negrón, urged Gov. Ned Lamont and state lawmakers to address the state’s financial inequities when it comes to the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula.
City leaders said their municipalities serve 83 percent of Connecticut’s high-needs students, who often struggle with poverty and require special education services. They all said that the current ECS funding levels leave their cities scrambling each year for extra financial supports to keep up with the actual cost to educate increasing rates of high-needs youth.
Click here to watch Monday’s full press conference.
In comments provided to the Independent for a previous article about the 119k Commission’s recommendations, a spokesperson for Gov. Ned Lamont said that ECS funding has grown by $345 million over the course of his administration, even as K‑12 enrollment statewide has decreased.
And in a separate press conference on Monday, Lamont said that special education funding will be a “priority for us in our upcoming budget” that his administration plans to release in a month. He noted that municipal aid “has gone up way above inflation over the last six years.” And, he said, he plans to sit down with the big city mayors and hear if “maybe they have some ideas in addition to just more funding [about] how we can get a better handle on this and take care of the kids.“
In a Tuesday afternoon interview with the Independent, New Haven State Sen. and President Pro Tem Martin Looney welcomed the mayors’ push for more funding for education in general, and special education in particular. He described special education funding as one of his caucus’s highest priorities for the session, with a select committee for special education designated by the legislature to look into exactly that.
Looney agreed that the ECS formula does need to be changed. He noted that, currently, cities and towns are eligible for state assistance under the so-called Excess Cost Grant only when they spend 4.5 times per pupil compared to typical expenditures. That vastly benefits towns that already spend relatively little to educate their students.
He concluded by noting that the onset of a second Trump administration spells quite a bit of uncertainty about federal education dollars that the state and municipalities in Connecticut rely on. He said that Trump might make cuts to three of the major federal education grants — known as Title I, II, and III. “We may have a situation in a lot of areas where we may have to spend more at the state level just to keep the status quo.”
"The Most Foundational Component Of Opportunity Is A High Quality Education"
The group described their experiences struggling to lead the largest local school districts with a lack of funds to target significant student obstacles. Each of them asked legislators and the governor to take up the 119k Commission’s recommendations for adjustments to the ECS formula by accounting for students who are impoverished, multilingual learners, and those who have special education needs as additional considerations for the financial formula.
They said that, if legislators were to adjust the ECS formula to provide equitable funding for high-needs student services, it would provide districts like New Haven the chance to increase allocations for special education, disengaged students, and multilingual youth.
The leaders emphasized the importance of the unity among the largest school districts in the state to amplify the voices of all school districts with similar challenges — like teacher shortages, underfunded services, and increasing needs for students like multilingual learners.
Elicker referred Monday to the governor’s recent state address that described the “north star” for the state as affordability and opportunity. “I think we all can agree that the most foundational component of opportunity is a high quality education and the reality is, right now across the state, that many of the districts that serve our high-needs students are not able to provide a full opportunity for our young people,” he said.
He further explained that if the state does not address the education concerns at hand the issue will continue to create financial liabilities for all.
“The financially correct choice,” Elicker said, is making the ECS formula equitable and loosening the state’s fiscal guardrails to avoid disconnected youth today going on to become non-tax paying residents who don’t have jobs or who become incarcerated.
The leaders called for the state to dedicate $545 million more through ECA. According to the 119k Commission, that number would bring $55.8 million more to Bridgeport, $59.5 million to Hartford, $42.7 million to New Haven, $5 million to Stamford, and $52.7 million to Waterbury.
New Haven received $142.5 million in ECS funding for the current fiscal year, per the city’s latest budget.
Elicker pointed out that currently New Haven and similar large districts are forced to spend less per pupil than more affluent school districts in the state. “If New Haven wanted to spend the same amount that New Canaan does per student, we would have to increase our budget by $81 million,” Elicker said.
The group made clear that their pleas are not for other school districts to get less and instead for the state to invest more in all students and, most specifically, in high-needs students across districts.
The state’s “foundation amount” is currently $11,525 per student and that hasn’t changed since 2013, they said.
Over the past five years, Elicker noted that New Haven’s municipal share for education funding has increased by 50 percent. He added that New Haven’s schools on average have one school counselor for every 412 students, one social worker for every 358 students, and one psychologist for every 595 students.
Negrón added that Monday’s plea from the state’s major cities would make it so “everybody wins.”
She also noted the difficulty in forming a budget when districts like New Haven get new students consistently throughout the school year with high needs. As a result of financial inequities, Negrón said, “I’m in process of having to make some very drastic decisions related to what programing is going to stay, which one will not.”
Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam added, “If we don’t make those investments in education now, then everything else we do to build a stronger state for the future is going to be lost.”
He added that Hartford currently has one social worker for every 325 students, and one middle school counselor for every 500 students. It also is dealing with chronic absenteeism like other districts but has to do so with less than ten engagement specialists for the entire district. Hartford also has 188 teacher vacancies and spends $157 million annually for special education services.
Hartford Supt. Leslie Torres-Rodriguez concluded Monday noting that as a result of federal pandemic-relief ESSER financial support drying up, the district had to make significant cuts last year. One of those trade offs was narrowing down the district’s 87 student engagement specialists to a total of nine for the district. “When I look at my chronic absenteeism trend it is nowhere trending down like it was in the last two years when we had the additional resources,” she said.
She said she hopes the school districts will be heard so their basic needs can be met. “I want the basics. I want all of our middle school students to have access to supports across all of our school which I know for a fact in all communities that don’t look like the ones that ours do. That’s a given,” Torres-Rodriguez said.