David Yaffe-Bellany Photo
Elliott: Regionalize schools.
The Bernie Sanders playbook propelled Joshua Elliott toward winning a state legislative seat. Then a judge demanded an overhaul of the education system — and the playbook didn’t have a response.
The judge’s demand came last week in the form of a ruling in a case called Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding (CCJEF) v. Rell.
The judge, Thomas Moukawsher, called for sweeping changes in how the state doles out education aid, sets graduation standards, evaluates teachers, funds special ed. He reacted in outrage over this year’s transfer of $5 million education aid by the legislature from poor cities like Bridgeport and New Haven to wealthier towns like Hamden during a last-minute backroom deal to gain support for an overall compromise on changes to the two-year state budget.
Elliott happens to be running for state representative in Hamden. He’s looking to succeed the retiring House speaker, Brendan Sharkey, who arranged that transfer that outraged the judge … and sent Hamden an infusion of new schools money.
That puts Elliott in a challenging spot as he pursues his general election campaign for Hamden’s 88th General Assembly seat. How does a Sanders progressive craft a response? (The state attorney general Thursday appealed the judge’s ruling, a day after the legislature’s leading Republicans called for him to do so.)
Elliott, a first-time candidate (who manages his mom’s Thyme & Season natural foods store in Hamden and owns Shelton’s Common Bond Market), defeated the establishment candidate, Hamden’s Town Council president, last month in a Democratic primary for the seat. He now faces Republican Marjorie Bonadies in the Nov. 8 general election.
Elliott won the primary with the help of a swarm of volunteers who, like him, threw themselves into volunteering for socialist Bernie Sanders in this year’s Democratic presidential primaries. They sought to carry that spirit into a local race. Elliott ran on Sanders-like positions such as upping taxes on the wealthy, raising the hourly minimum wage to $15, and passing a law to charge big employers like Walmart for Medicaid, food stamps, or other state help provided to their low-wage workers.
Knocking on some doors in town as many as seven times in the primary campaign, Elliott also heard a lot about local issues, and offered responses that fit into his broader social-justice outlook: How the state should address high property taxes in town like Hamden by relying less on the property taxes, more on progressive income taxes (plus by legalizing marijuana and reinstituting highway tolls). How Hamden should be able to collect taxes from its largest problem corporation, Quinnipiac University.
But Judge Moukawsher’s decision in some ways pits social justice against Elliott’s constituents’ self-interest: The need to send more state schools aid to cities rather than suburban towns, versus Hamden’s already difficult quest to pay for its own schools amid high taxes and inherited high pension costs.
Or does it?
In an interview Thursday on WNHH radio’s “Dateline New Haven,” Elliott said he indeed struggles with how to respond to the decision. Then he did respond. With nuance.
Regionalism Beckons
An edited transcript of that portion of the conversation follows:
WNHH: What was your take on this?
Elliott:I know Hamden has demographically changed significantly over the past 10, 15 years. It’s become harder and harder for us to maintain the quality of education. I do think we need more money to come into our education spending. I know that’s getting short shrift. …
The guy you’re trying to replace, Brendan Sharkey, did a move to get suburban support for the budget [compromise vote this spring] in return for taking money away from poor cities for schools and giving it to the towns. And Hamden made out. Are you going to tell your voters, “We should sacrifice money from our school system so people in New Haven and Bridgeport can get more”?
That is one of the difficulties. On the one hand you have the constituency you serve. On the other hand are ideals for what makes sense for the system.
So generally I would say it makes more sense for towns that have more money, are more affluent, to be helping out the cities that do not have that money. To have that equalization. There’s the argument that if you grow up in a family that’s higher up on the economic totem pole, you have built-in advantages. It doesn’t make sense to have more funds diverted to your town. Of course, those people also have access to private schools that they can afford. …
But when you live in a town like Hamden, which is probably a little over that average … when we already have the fourth-highest mill rate, people are leaving our town to go to North Haven because the lower mill rate. I talked to a couple of families in Spring Glen one day, in what seemed back to back to back one day. They are leaving because they are saving a few thousand dollars on their property tax bill.
It becomes a race to the bottom. It squeezes towns like us where we have limited ways to raise funds for our own education.
It does put us in this trap, where I do have this idealistic vision of making those wealthiest towns pay. I wouldn’t say we’re a wealthier town. But we’re certainly going to do be doing better than Bridgeport. It puts us in a bind that we’re already having a tough time raising funds.
There is one thing I do agree with Brendan Sharkey on: the idea of regionalization. If we can combine forces, we can make our school system a little more efficient.
Does that mean you would have a regional board of ed?
Correct.
Some of your constituents are going to be really mad.
Absolutely.
They’’ll say, “We don’t want New Haven telling us” [how to spend money] ….
To me it’s about having a more efficient system that can triage.
Who would be in your combined district? Hamden, North Haven, New Haven, East Haven, West Haven … would that be one combined district?
I can’t say yes or no. I actually don’t know what the district would look like.
The judge did not say you [the state] can’t spend more on schools … He said how you fix it is up to you. … What about spending more money overall on schools? Rather than taking money away from Hamden, you just send more to New Haven?
I don’t know my response to that.
I guess I thought that was going to be your response.
The problem is, even if I believe in that … Each town has to make its own decisions as to paying its municipal workers. So Hamden has a pension problem. This is going to be a common occurrence among lots of towns. We have a lot of expenses going forward that cut into our overall budget. bBecause of that we have to raise those property taxes to cover education, which I think is about a third of our budget, approximately.
So what’s going to happen is, if everybody was on a blank slate: I would say, definitely, let’s divert money to towns that need it. I still on a moral sense believe that. But that’s also a reason why I think we need a regional-based system. …
I do want say again on a moralistic level, yes, I believe that wealthier towns should be paying more into towns like New Haven. But at the same time, Hamden has a specific difficulty. If we do [take money away], our education system in Hamden is going to get crippled very, very quickly.
Under regionalism, in the end would Hamden get more?
It might end up being net neutral. It would save us down the line and make sure that we are having funds diverted in a way that is more meritocratic.
Are the conservatives and part of the judge’s decision right that we don’t need to spend more money on education overall? [Or] why not spend more money on education in the state and not have inner-ring suburbs get cut? … Is regionalization the answer? Or are we kicking the can down the road — when we have to tax the rich more and change that whole conversation?
I don’t think it’s either/or. It’s a combination of a lot of factors. If you bring in some money through the legalization of marijuana, [through reinstituting] tolls, you pass that Wal-Mart bill that will bring in a few hundred million dollars … Cities that are in more need should be getting a higher percentage. I don’t think the answer is just taking from towns. I think there are enough other avenues to get revenue to fund [the state Educational Cost Sharing system]. There is that push-pull, where each town has its own specific problem
Click on or download the above sound file to hear the full interview with Elliott and campaign manager Sarah Ganong on WNHH radio’s “Dateline New Haven.”
Today’s program was made possible thanks in part to support from Yale-New Haven Hospital.