No Easy Answers in School Funding Drama (CT)

June 20, 2011

Even Schools Superintendent John Ramos didn’t know he was going to push the pause button on cuts that he — and countless others — said would decimate the public school system next year.

But when he did Thursday, it left school and city officials, as well as parents, wondering if it was a good idea. The move by the superintendent stopped immediate cuts, but some asked if it just postponed a funding problem that may only get worse.

Faced with squeezing $233 million of needs into a $215.8 million budget, the same bottom line for a fourth year, Ramos came to last Thursday’s special Board of Education meeting with a plan, scribbled out in long hand, but wasn’t sure he was going to do it.

“I went in there with a sense of, I would do what I thought was necessary when the time came,” he said.

He waited through a painful school board Finance Committee process that actually worsened the district’s $19 million shortfall before shocking everyone with a recommendation not to implement the 2011-12 operating budget, convincing a chronically divided school board to hold off until he can file a complaint with the state, work with the city to secure more funding and elicit parent support.

While he pursues this, the district will work from its 2010-11 budget blueprint on a month-to-month basis. He acknowledged the plan is risky, but thinks the district was given no other choice.

The decision means that Dunbar School will not close, as was planned, and the district office will not locate there. The plan to lay off 430 staff members and cut programs has been suspended.

Ramos said the district still will tighten its belts wherever possible and not fill vacancies where feasible. There will be a hiring freeze. He intends to tak e Mayor Bill Finch up on his offer to help and will convene a meeting, tentatively slated for June 27, to bring the community together.

“Now the challenge is attempt to prevail upon the conscience of this state, people of this state, to do the right thing by the children in our city,” Ramos said.

While attending a mayor’s conference in Baltimore, Finch said regardless of what the board feels about the bottom line, it has an obligation to pass a budget. “Even if it’s a bad one,” he said.

Finch agrees the district is severely underfunded, but also said it has to be creative and provide the best education it can.

No one is going to be convinced there is a shortfall unless the board passes the budget, he said.

Given the fiscal realities of the state and nation, more funding may just not be an option.

“We have no more money to give anybody,” said State Board of Education President Allan Taylor.

He and others at the state acknowledge Bridgeport has been underfunded for years but say they can do little, except craft legislation specific to the district’s situation. This year, lawmakers limited their focus to the Windham school system, which has been taken over by the state.

Still, some found relief in what Ramos did.

“I personally feel a great weight has been lifted, even though this may be a temporary reprieve,” said board member Maria Pereira, often one of Ramos’ strongest critics.

Hernan Illingworth, outgoing president of the district-wide parent group, said Ramos’ action buys more time, which is just what was needed because what was being proposed was not good for children at all.

“I finally felt the superintendent really spoke and represented the parents and students,” Illingworth said, adding, “It buys us time. It’s also risky. Do we run un til we run out of money?”

Finch’s deal with AFSCME Local 1522, which represents school aides, clerical workers and special education van drivers, threw a curveball into the budget drama late last week. In exchange for paying higher medical premiums, he gave the workers job security.

The mayor, who will have two sons at Read School next year, said anyone who thought the district was really going to lay off 430 employees was falling into a trap.

“You pull the trigger if you have to, but if you tell them who will get laid off and how much you have to save, they will come around with concessions,” Finch said.

Although Ramos still favors the plan to close Dunbar School, he said the legislative decision to grant the district $6.8 million toward a school overhaul was reason enough to step back.

Overall, he said his staff put in countless hours trying to make the numbers work. He was prepared to go forward with the budget as proposed, even though he said it was bad educational policy, pointing out it would have meant 29 students per classroom and one social worker for 760 students.

“I reached a point where I said somebody has to take a stand for these kids,” Ramos said. “Our scholars have no advocate here.”