Diloreto Elementary & Middle School in New Britain Jacqueline Rabe Thomas / www.CtMirror.org

Democrats say the state budget plan they released Tuesday was put together in the hope it would generate some Republican votes on the legislature’s Appropriations Committee, but when they didn’t materialize Democrats were unable to hold their slim majority together to pass the plan.

Diloreto Elementary & Middle School in New Britain Jacqueline Rabe Thomas / www.CtMirror.org

Here’s what their so-called “compromise budget” would have provided in state education aid, according to data provided to some legislators by the Office of Fiscal Analysis.

Greenwich was the biggest winner for education aid. Its Education Cost Sharing (ECS) grant – the state’s main tool for distributing aid to local school districts – was slated to increase by $1.25 million. Lisbon was the biggest loser, taking an ECS hit of $155,279. School aid for troubled school districts was boosted slightly – with Bridgeport, Hartford and Waterbury each scheduled for a $500,000 increase next fiscal year.

Most towns would have received increases in state aid for special education. That’s because the state must make up for cuts to that grant last year to comply with federal rules that forbid the state from cutting spending on special education programs.

(How did the school aid plan in the proposed budget compare to the other plans that have been offered? Read details on Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s plan here and Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff’s here.)

Jacqueline was CT Mirror’s Education and Housing Reporter, and an original member of the CT Mirror staff, joining shortly before our January 2010 launch. Her awards include the best-of-show Theodore A. Driscoll Investigative Award from the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists in 2019 for reporting on inadequate inmate health care, first-place for investigative reporting from the New England Newspaper and Press Association in 2020 for reporting on housing segregation, and two first-place awards from the National Education Writers Association in 2012. She was selected for a prestigious, year-long Propublica Local Reporting Network grant in 2019, exploring a range of affordable and low-income housing issues. Before joining CT Mirror, Jacqueline was a reporter, online editor and website developer for The Washington Post Co.’s Maryland newspaper chains. Jacqueline received an undergraduate degree in journalism from Bowling Green State University and a master’s in public policy from Trinity College.

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