“Inequitable.”
That’s the word that various education stakeholders used while describing Gov. Ned Lamont’s proposed budget, which was released on Feb. 7.
Last year, lawmakers included $150 million for K-12 education financing reforms in the preliminary $26 billion budget adopted for the 2024-25 fiscal year, but Lamont’s new budget proposes to nick that promise by about $48 million and reroute some of those funds to early childhood education.
But who will receive the brunt of those cuts, if the legislature approves them? Probably students of color and the districts that traditionally teach the majority of them, education stakeholders said.
“Whenever we ask ourselves the question of how it is that a budget looks at points in time in the educational trajectory of a child — as if it isn’t all connected — then funds some of those points while taking away from other of those points, we have to think that most of the burden is going to fall on children of color,” said Steven Hernández, the executive director of education advocacy group ConnCAN.
Lamont’s budget recommends increased funding for the Education Cost Sharing grant from $68.5 million to $74.2 million and investments into a program targeting chronic absenteeism ($7 million) and schools meals ($5.6 million).
But the governor’s budget also takes back some of the funding that was allocated to choice schools last year. Under Lamont’s proposed budget, state funding would decrease by $48.3 million for magnet schools, $10.2 million for the open choice program, $6 million for vocational agriculture schools and $2.2 million for charter schools compared to the budget approved last year.
Local school districts would have to pick up those costs for magnet schools and the open choice program.
“The cut on choice schools is a direct cut on communities of color and a direct cut in the future educational opportunities for kids of color,” Hernández said. “In a lot of ways, [choice schools] are the last opportunity for public education that actually works for kids and that is led by teachers that look like those children. But [the schools are] also seats of innovation. They are the spaces where we’re testing the future of learning, and we’re bringing in resourcing for these children that without for-choice they will never have seen.”
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The cut to magnet schools is particularly damaging, not just to the schools and students themselves but the local districts that are responsible for picking up the tuition tab, said Michael Morton from the School and State Finance Project.
“When we talk about the [budget change], not only is it not funding magnet school students based on their needs — which is something that we’ve always pushed for — but what it also is doing is removing the cap on tuition” that school districts are required to pay, Morton said.
Last year, the General Assembly approved a measure that said local districts that are sending students to these choice schools would be responsible for up to 58% of the tuition cost and the state would pick up the rest.
The tuition cap, supposed to go into effect for the 2024-25 school year, could save districts millions of dollars.
The cap would have kept more money in local districts. But “by removing that cap … you’re now putting the onus back on the local school districts, you’re now taking away resources for their students, and you’re continuing their perpetual cycle of conflict between different public schools,” Morton said. “The impact of where the dollars are going to be felt the most is in school districts that are historically underfunded and historically serving Black and brown students.”
Students of color, on average, make up 80% of the population in magnet schools and often come from districts like Hartford, Bridgeport, Waterbury or New Haven as part of the Sheff v. O’Neill school desegregation agreement.
“[These parents] want a choice. They’re sick of sending their kids to school districts that unfortunately have been underfunded for years and have not been successful. And without for-choice, they have no opportunity,” said Sen. Doug McCrory, co-chair of the Education Committee. “They want their children to have opportunity just like everybody else, and if these schools provide an opportunity, why not give it to them? We’re not talking about a lot of money here.”
The Sheff Movement, a coalition of parents, students and community members, has urged constitutes to reach out to their lawmakers and advocate for the full $150 million funding.
“Today, due to Sheff v. O’Neill, there are thousands of students attending 43 magnet schools; students attending Open Choice districts, and students attending technical high schools in response to the Sheff decision. However, funding for Sheff initiatives, most especially Sheff magnet schools, is in jeopardy,” the coalition wrote on its website. “These changes may dictate drastic cuts to magnet school programming, including the potential of loss of staff and educational resources.”
If Lamont’s budget is approved and districts are left with paying the full tuition cost, it’ll come as a double whammy to school leaders who are anticipating fiscal cliffs with the end of federal COVID-19 relief funding in September.
Hartford, Bridgeport, New Haven, Danbury and Manchester Public Schools may be anticipating fiscal cliffs between 4% and 19%, according to reports from Edunomics, a research center part of Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.
Bridgeport and Hartford may be hit the hardest, with anticipated fiscal cliffs of 19% and 13% respectively, which could mean up to 350 full-time positions may be at risk at each district.
Hartford Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez said the district is anticipating a $50 million deficit because of the expiration of COVID-19 relief funds, but now with the uncertainty of state funding, the district may also be losing an additional $11 million.
“[The governor’s budget] shifts the entire burden of tuition cost back to many sending districts and historically disadvantaged and marginalized communities who should no longer face the financial burden of paying other school districts to educate their children,” Torres-Rodriguez said. “For urban districts specifically, the financial burden would be significant and would also have a direct impact on the resources directly to our young people.”
The $150 million investment was meant to ease the transition off of those federal dollars, lawmakers said.
“We need to be make sure these districts are aligned to be able to prepare and move forward when [the federal funding] is over,” McCrory said. “This is not a $150 million hit — we voted for this — and we said we were gonna do it. Now, we just got to do it. You can’t change the game in the ninth inning.”
Jeffrey Beckham, secretary of the Office of Policy and Management, said state support gave local districts the ability to spend money in other ways.
“The current budget disguises municipal aid as education funding, essentially sending aid budgeted for magnet and vo-ag students back to their home district as a tuition subsidy rather than adding resources for classroom learning,” he said. “Our proposal increases ECS funding, fully funds charter schools and vo-ag schools at the statutory amount and increases the per-pupil grant for both magnet schools and open choice schools.”
But not everyone sees it that way. The per-pupil grant increase, according to school districts, comes out of local budgets.
McCrory said that choice schools are “state schools” and should be the “state’s responsibility to fund.”
“We have an academic and achievement gap problem in the state of Connecticut, and that problem will not be solved by taking the money away from the schools that need to it to properly educate their children,” McCrory said.
Without the promised state funding, even more cuts are expected in the schools and central offices.
“You can’t make up $11 million in a budget without significantly impacting staffing,” said Kate Dias, the president of the Connecticut Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union. “The reason this is particularly of concern for our students of color is that we know where they reside, and those districts are the most negatively impacted by the amount of money now not being sent. … You don’t make up $11 million without impacting direct student services, like teachers, social workers, counselors.”
“When you think of concentration of need, it puts us in a situation in which we are constantly having to figure out how to bend ourselves even further to try to meet the basic needs of our students,” Torres-Rodriguez said.
Lawmakers and other educational advocates continued to call for Lamont to fund both pillars of public education, but not at the expense of stripping one to fund the other.
“The attempt to pit us [early child care and K-12] against each other isn’t going to work,” said Rep. Jeff Currey, co-chair of the Education Committee. “We can and should [fund] both.”