Education Funding: Fact vs. Fiction
By Former Mayor Timothy T. Stewart at August 9, 2024 | 8:30 am | Print
For several years now I have been defending the city’s position on educational spending while being blamed for the poor performance of our school district amongst other things. If one reads today’s headlines a common theme has been followed by the democratic majority which is, years of “flat-funding” and a “lack of resources” have caused the system to fail our children. Declining scores on CMT’s and CAPT tests are allegedly the result of underfunding education in New Britain for many years. One might think that someone should be put in jail for holding our children hostage to the almighty dollar? I have personally heard enough of this rhetoric and I believe it’s time to set the record straight with the people of this community.
I took office in November of 2003 and almost immediately we were faced with a problem with the State Board of Education. The previous democratic mayor had deliberately underfunded the Board of education in his last budget by about $250,000. The penalty for underfunding the BOE was to pay them back two dollars for every dollar of underfunding. After several meetings with the state we are able to rectify the problem without costing the taxpayers additional resources by transferring monies into their self-insurance account to make up for the differential. This requirement was under the old system that utilized the Minimum Expenditure Requirement (MER) as the funding floor for cities and towns across the state. Today’s requirement is somewhat different as they now utilize the Minimum Budget Requirement (MBR) that does not allow the funder to give them less than what was given to them in the previous years. It doesn’t even take into account a loss of student population as a reason for a decrease in funding. This situation is exactly what has happened in New Britain over the past five years. At no time during my tenure as mayor did the city ever underfund the BOE. That’s a fact!
Flat funding is a term invented by democrats to paint a dismal picture of their opponents’ actions with regards to educational spending. Annual requests from the BOE are typically in the double digit percentage increases. Have their requests for funding ever been acknowledged as honest and worthy of being fully funded? Absolutely not! Mostly because they have demonstrated year after year an unwillingness to work with the city to save money. They also have padded their budget requests because they know that the city will eventually cut their request significantly when it is analyzed more carefully.
Let me give some examples of where the BOE and the city can work together to achieve positive results; savings can be generated through cooperative purchasing powers, consolidations of similar administrative functions, facilities management initiatives and thousands of other ways to save monies that would allow the savings to be used were they could have the most beneficial effect on our children’s learning. The Town of Plainville for example has recently combined the towns and BOE’s financial operations which resulted in an education budget this year that was increased by a modest 0.9%. Significant efficiencies were realized and oversight was gained on their expenditures and look what happens when people are willing to work together.
Educational funding of our cities schools is the responsibility of the State of CT. Educational Cost Sharing Grants are handed out to cities and towns based on an archaic formula that has been modified a thousand times over the years to accommodate special requests from the state’s largest cities. A lawsuit to which the City of New Britain is a party to, Connecticut Coalition for Justice in education Funding vs. Rell was filed against the state that alleges the state has violated the constitutional rights of its’ children by depriving them of an adequate education by underfunding them by billions of dollars over the years. The result of which is the state’s neediest districts cannot afford the basic educational tools such as sufficient numbers of teachers, reasonable class sizes, computers, paper, etc., etc., etc. Governor Dannel Malloy’s budget director has even admitted that the state is not currently meeting its’ obligations to adequately fund our schools. Wow and I thought he was traveling around the state on his “I am the education Governor” tour last year. While his increases to the ECS grant have been miniscule it will take the state over 20 years to even approach the funding gap that exists in this state. So what we will have is another several generations of children that will fall even further behind because of the state’s inability to fund education to the appropriate levels. So I ask you, who is to blame? If I had the luxury of more monies coming into the city I would have gladly gave the schools more of it. Unfortunately in cash strapped cities like New Britain we do not have that luxury.
A student’s success is largely due to their willingness to learn, having the support they need to succeed both at home and in school, and having qualified teachers in the classrooms to motivate them along the way. While technology can assist both children and teachers to get to new levels of learning, we have created a generation of children that rely on technology to do virtually everything for them. Having a smart board in every classroom is going to do exactly what for our students when some of the teachers are not even literate to it’s’ technology? Bonding for books and consumables is not a very intelligent way to tackle this problem. The solutions lie in all of us. Stopping the rhetoric is a good way to create the necessary dialogue with all stakeholders to get solutions. Making a sincere attempt to consolidate resources with the city can free up more monies to reduce class sizes and buy text books. Partnerships with the corporate community and businesses can infuse much need cash into necessary programs.
It’s time for people to stop the politics and realize the only winners here are politicians and their willingness to get re-elected, it’s certainly not the children! For once can we elect people that care more for this city than for their parties success?
