Legislative Democrats are homing in on a $170 million infusion for Connecticut public schools this year, House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said Monday.

It’s slightly more than the $150 million House Democrats were kicking around a month ago, and significantly above the $100 million floor Gov. Ned Lamont offered Thursday. That was an upward shift for the fiscally moderate governor, who had provided no such additional funding in his February budget proposal.

Ritter said he thinks legislators can still nudge him higher.

“I am confident we can get the governor to be comfortable with that number [of $170 million],” Ritter said.

Whether the money fits into the formal budget or comes out of a side pot of money remains to be seen, Ritter said. Education advocates have expressed concerns that, in the latter case, the cash infusion might be a one-off, rather than a sustained investment. Ritter said that would not be the case.

“If we pay for 170 [million] in ECS and then next year say, ‘We didn’t mean it, it was one time,’ you’d get zero votes for that concept,” Ritter said.

ECS is short for Education Cost Sharing, the primary state funding grant for schools.

Republicans have offered their own plan they say would net schools an additional $335 million, but it relies partly on winning a legal battle against New York over work-from-home income tax receipts, and partly on eliminating health coverage for some undocumented residents..

The Speaker’s announcement came hours after municipal leaders gathered at the statehouse, again, to call for increased state aid to public schools. They reiterated the same concerns that have animated a broad coalition of advocates this year, from teachers to students to administrators to city officials: The state school funding formula is broken, and with costs shooting upward, schools need immediate help.

“Let me tell you … $100 million put into education this year is probably a D-minus,” said Joe DeLong, executive director of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. 

“We’ve heard numbers like $180 million. I think $180 million should be a floor, not a ceiling,” DeLong added.

The urgency is partly because costs for schools have risen significantly faster than state funding, particularly in the areas of special education and health insurance. What the state doesn’t pay for, individual towns have to cover. It can be a lot of money.

“Education comprises the lion’s share of our local budget. It often exceeds 70%, almost 80%, of the total municipal spending,” said Mary Calorio, president of the Connecticut Council of Small Towns.

Calorio said five or six years ago, the state’s Education Cost Sharing grant covered 25% of many small towns’ education costs. Now, she said, it only covers about 15%. That’s a loss towns can only make up by raising property taxes.

“That’s a big gap for them, for our property taxpayers, to absorb, and there’s nowhere else for the towns to go,” Calorio said. “It’s either cuts or property taxes. That’s it.”

The result, said New London Mayor Michael Passero, is a “Sophie’s Choice” for many towns.

“We have to choose between our children and our children’s families,” Passero said. “We have to choose between keeping them in their homes … or provide for them at school.”

DeLong noted that Democrats have set aside $500 million for, as he put it, “campaign season rebate checks” — a $200-per-person tax rebate that would hit just before Election Day. The $170 million boost might come out of that pool of money, but DeLong questioned why the number isn’t bigger.

[RELATED: Gov. Lamont’s tax rebate: What you need to know]

“This is the single greatest issue that is driving unaffordability in Connecticut. The single greatest issue,” DeLong said. “If we have $500 million to allocate this budget cycle, it should be allocated toward this.”

Thompson Board of Education chair Jessica Bolte called attention to another issue with ECS: the fact that it ties school funding to enrollment. This can be a particular issue for smaller towns, which end up with fewer ECS dollars to spread over their buildings and bus fleets.

“Small enrollment in geographic isolation carries real, measurable costs that a flat personal number will never capture,” Bolte said.

Fixing those issues is not on anyone’s agenda at the statehouse this year. It may, however, be a question for Lamont’s Blue Ribbon Commission, which the governor formally launched last week. The commission will spend the next several months studying Connecticut’s school funding system and provide a report in January 2027.

Speaking alongside municipal leaders, Education Committee co-Chair Rep. Jennifer Leeper, D-Fairfield, said with enough school funding, educators could turn their attention to “how to further our children, challenge them, support them.”

“Instead, every year is spent on figuring out where we are going to cut and how are we going to do more with less,” Leeper said.