Fair Funding for Connecticut’s Schools (CT)
December 22, 2010
A microcosm of the dysfunctional education system highlighted in the recent documentary Waiting for Superman might be found in the plight of a coalition of underfunded Connecticut schools and its slow slog through the legal system.
The Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding (CCJEF) represents municipal governments, boards of education, education associations and families who all feel wronged by the current way the state funds local school districts. The state has a complicated formula to disburse state education money in a way that attempts to make up for the wild disparities in wealth across Connecticut towns and cities and the wild disparities of tax bases they cause.
That formula has not stopped inequities — Bridgeport Public Schools currently has a budget that spends about $13,000 per student while Westport can dole out around $17,000 per kid, and the demands on a district in a low-income area like Bridgeport are arguably greater. 95 percent of Bridgeport students are eligible for free or reduced-cost lunch and breakfast and the variety of languages spoken by students create a challenge for teachers and administrators.
So, representing cities from Stamford to New London, CCJEF filed suit against Gov. M. Jodi Rell in 2005. Their argument was that each student has a right enshrine d in the state constitution to a quality education and the current disparities in school funding were denying them that right.
State Rep. Christopher Caruso (D-Bridgeport) lays out the situation in his city like this: “You have aging textbooks and school buildings that are, in some cases, over 100 years old. Teachers have to go out and buy basic supplies, like paper, and there’s one guidance counselor per 900 students.”
In 2009, the Connecticut Supreme Court agreed with CCJEF — the current state of education was a violation of students’ constitutional rights. They kicked the case back to a lower court, which would decide what constitutes a quality education and how the state would be forced to change the way it handles schooling to provide it. That stage of the case is not scheduled to begin until 2014 (nine years after the lawsuit was filed). If either party appeals the ruling, the matter could be bounced around for a few more years. In the meanwhile, the constitutional rights of students in certain largely low-income areas will continue to be violated, by the state Supreme Court’s own admission. “We’d lose an entire generation of kids,” says Caruso.
Unless incoming Gov. Dan Malloy does something.
Last week, the Bridgeport delegation to the General Assembly, called on the governor-elect to settle the case before it heads back to court. (Bridgeport, as the largest, neediest district in the state stands to benefit tremendously from a win in the case.) They have a good reason to believe Malloy will be receptive: The City of Stamford joined CCJEF in the suit when Malloy was mayor.
“As a founding member of the CCJEF coalition, and a former mayor who has struggled with the cost of funding education after the state has failed to meet its obligations, Governor-Elect Malloy i s uniquely aware of the situation cities like Bridgeport are in,” wrote spokeswoman Colleen Flanagan in an email to the Weekly. “He thanks the Bridgeport Delegation for their interest in providing the best possible public school education to children in their city, and will consider their request.”
Caruso says the coalition did not get the response they’d hoped for from Gov. Rell — she vetoed the increase on state income tax on wealthier citizens they were hoping to use to resolve some of the school funding inequities.
The state representative declined to give specifics on how exactly the state’s way of doling out money for schools would have to change for him to consider the matter resolved with Malloy. “The solution would have to be broad and comprehensive,” Caruso said, “because the problem is broad and comprehensive.”