Connecticut Starts To Revamp How It Funds Education

Here in Connecticut, there is another great example of the battle between urban and suburban/rural interests, this time over education funding. After a decade long legal battle, the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding (CCJEF) finally won a landmark court case that challenged the way the state allocated money for education, claiming it violated the state constitution's requirement to provide an equal education for all students. The CCJEF also asked the judge to rule that the state must increase funding for education but were not able to prevail in that part of the case.

The inequity in the Connecticut school systems are vast and striking. Here where I live, the city of Bridgeport continually struggles to properly fund its schools, its students have below average reading and math scores, and only graduates about 63% of its students from high school. The wealthy neighboring town of Fairfield, on the other hand, graduates 94% of its high school students and sends many of them to some of the most prestigious colleges.

Rather than letting the courts decide the new allocation of funds, Governor Malloy has decided to bite the bullet and ask the legislature to help craft a new system entirely. Unfortunately, Connecticut is already suffering a budget crunch so all Malloy's proposal will do is rearrange the existing money spent on education. But even that will make a huge difference to some of the least performing school districts located in the poorer cities of the state. According to Malloy, his proposal would be the first step in "rectifying what Connecticut has done to itself over a long period of time, which is to not properly support pockets of poverty in urban environments and some small towns. So we’re seizing the moment to rectify that situation."

Under his proposal, the actual number of students in each particular district would drive the funding. Incredibly, that is not the way the system works now. In addition, the proposal would look at the number of children in that district who are eligible for the children's health insurance program in order to estimate the number of students in poverty. Malloy believes this will capture far more poor students than the current system which looks at whether students qualify for school lunch support. His plan would also shift about $400 million in teacher pension costs from the state to local governments. All in all, this will reduce funding for 138 localities in the state while increasing funding for 31. The town of Fairfield mentioned above would lose over $7.5 million in funding under Malloy's plan.

You can expect the resistance to this plan to be pretty fierce. Some of the wealthiest towns in the state stand to lose quite a lot of funding and they are going to fight this tooth and nail. So this is just the opening gambit in what will be a protracted struggle in the legislature. It is quite probable that teacher seniority and evaluations will also get dragged into this battle as bargaining chips as will funding for charter schools which Malloy has consistently supported.

Malloy is already an unpopular governor with his approval rating falling to Chris Christie-like numbers in the middle of last year, a low of 24%. He had probably anticipated parachuting out of the governor's mansion and into some position in the Hillary Clinton administration, but that was not to be. So, while he is governor and unpopular, it seems like he has decided to be unpopular while doing the right thing. It will make for an interesting legislative session in Hartford.