On a jubilant day of door-knocking in the East End of Bridgeport, the closest Joe Ganim came to a sour moment was at the end of Wilmot Avenue, where a woman demanded to know how someone convicted of a crime still can participate in electoral politics.
Bridgeport
Posted inPolitics
Ganim’s comeback pitch: ‘It’s not about my past’
BRIDGEPORT – It’s the question of Connecticut’s primary season: Can Joseph P. Ganim, a dozen years after his mayoralty here was unmasked as a racketeering conspiracy to shake down city contractors, regain the office he so memorably disgraced?
Posted inPolitics
New report: CT traffic is bad — and likely to get worse
WASHINGTON — Connecticut has some of the worst traffic in the nation, with snarls that cost drivers about 20 gallons of wasted fuel and dozens of hours of lost time each year – and things are likely to get worse, a new report says.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
School funding in Connecticut is fundamentally flawed, all agree
Connecticut’s funding system for all public schools is fundamentally broken. This dysfunction causes the incessant fighting over the state budget each year. Connecticut needs a funding solution for every school – charter, district, magnet, and the rest – that ensures that all students have the resources they need to learn.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
Nine shot, one dead in Bridgeport, ho hum.
Having witnessed numerous shootings, murders, break-ins, drug arrests and gang activity, the residents of Bridgeport’s Trumbull Gardens are accustomed to hearing gunshots in the night; and another shooting is hardly front page news. But even by the jaded standards of inner-city life, the shootings June 11 were exceptional in their brutality, their random nature and the utter disregard for human life displayed by the killers. And yet, aside from Mayor Bill Fitch and his rival in the upcoming primary, former mayor Joe Ganim, the Bridgeport police and some local clergy, the silence from Connecticut’s leaders is telling.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
In Connecticut, there is no ‘achievement gap’
Before students of all colors can succeed equally in Connecticut’s public schools, we must be bluntly honest about why disparities exist. An achievement gap would exist if we gave every student equal opportunities and some children still failed to achieve. In a myriad ways, we do not give all our children the same opportunities. Nowhere is this more apparent than in school discipline policies that exclude children from the classroom.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
No time to waste in re-imagining Connecticut’s education funding
Each legislative session, we engage in the same political fights that yield only incremental progress towards the goal of providing quality education for all children. These unproductive debates, which pit traditional schools against public charter schools, underscore the need to solve our fundamentally broken funding model that currently plagues our education system.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
CT Legislators must deliver on charter school promises in Bridgeport, Stamford
Last week, the state’s Appropriations Committee proposed a budget that includes cuts of more than $20 million dollars to public charter schools — including funding for Capital Prep Harbor and Stamford Charter School for Excellence — two approved schools that families have been demanding and are counting on. This budget would stifle the progress we’ve made in the past few years and would hurt the future of children across our state.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
Bridgeport deserves hearing on bill to phase out coal-fired plant
Connecticut legislators have apparently decided not to hold a hearing on HB 6616, a measure that would phase out the use of coal to generate power and provide a smooth transition away from power plant jobs. The coal-fired Bridgeport Harbor Generating Station has been polluting the air for years, We demand evironmental justice and the right to be be heard on this bill.
Posted inNews
Op-Ed: Bridgeport’s comeback driven by jobs, development, and clean energy
Today, you can stand on a white sandy beach of a re-opened Pleasure Beach in Bridgeport and look out onto Steelpointe Harbor where development is finally happening. There are new and improved views like this across the city, and many more to come as part of its comeback.
Posted inNews
Op-Ed: To reduce gun deaths, focus on Connecticut’s drug trade, gang life
The killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School were horrible, but Connecticut is overlooking the dozens of individual gun deaths that take place with little notice in the state’s largest cities.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
To reduce gun deaths, focus on Connecticut’s drug trade, gang life
The killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School were horrible, but Connecticut is overlooking the dozens of individual gun deaths that take place with little notice in the state’s largest cities.
Posted inPolitics
Ohio joins dustup over claim by Connecticut to be ‘first in flight’
The Ohio state legislature has introduced a resolution disparaging Connecticut’s claims to be “First in Flight,” reigniting a fight over whether the Wright brothers or Gustave Whitehead, a German immigrant who lived in Fairfield, were the first to fly a powered aircraft.
Posted inEducation
Special Report: Education, Diversity and Change in Fairfield County
Fairfield County, a region marked by sharp disparities in income and in urban and suburban life, faces particular challenges in assuring all its residents a quality education. Today, a special report, “Education, Diversity and Change in Fairfield County,” explores the issue through in-depth policy reporting, interactive maps and charts, photo galleries and opinion pieces written by teachers from the Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield University.
Posted inNews
Op-Ed: Bridgeport wants truly public schools, not more charters
Hired spokespeople advocating more charter schools do not represent the vast majority of Bridgeport parents and taxpayers, who are more interested in properly funding their public schools.