Governor Dannel Malloy has grown a big budget deficit and has decided that schools should help to reduce the deficit. He has proposed to cut school funding across the state, except for the 30 poorest districts and to eliminate state aid entirely in 28 affluent districts.
His proposal has set off a firestorm of opposition.
“To take a district like mine … and completely eliminate the funding is entirely irresponsible,” Madison Superintendent Thomas Scarice said. The district stands to lose $1.57 million.
Taken together with the state’s “countless unfunded mandates” for districts, Scarice said, Malloy’s proposal is “nothing less than unspeakable.”
The slashing of education funding was part of a revised budget proposal from Malloy in an effort to close a $922 million deficit projected for the next fiscal year.
Rep. Andy Fleischmann, D-West Hartford and co-chairman of the legislature’s education committee, said Malloy’s plan for education funding is “not bold or smart” and is a proposal “that no one would ever vote for….”
Sen. Toni Boucher, R-Wilton, said Malloy’s proposal has been met with “complete outrage and disbelief” from the towns she represents in Fairfield County. Malloy is proposing elimination of funding for many of the towns in Fairfield and Litchfield counties, as well as in several districts along the eastern shoreline.
“This is really a slap in the face of our communities,” Boucher said. “They are penalizing towns that have worked hard to be fiscally responsible, while the state continues to be fiscally irresponsible.”
She said she’s hearing an outcry for the elimination of unfunded mandates if the education funding is pulled.
Many school leaders say that Malloy has not only upended their budgets, but has left their planning for next year in disarray since they don’t know how much their budgets will be cut or whether Malloy’s proposal will be rejected.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is precisely the kind of strategy the turns people against one another, appearing to help one group at the expense of another: Time to rejuvenate the old slogan, “An Injury to One is an Injury to All”: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arthur-camins/an-injury-to-one-is-still_b_9556976.html
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We have seen the corporate for-profit, anti-public school agenda use this strategy before — to cut school funding causing community based, transparent, non-profit, democratic public schools to deteriorate and go bankrupt so state governors controlled by Bill Gates and/or ALEC/Koch brothers or Walton family, etc. then use that as an excuse to take over the public school district and then turn all the public property those schools sit on over to corporate charter schools that then own that property tax payers paid for as for profit corporate charters take over teaching OUR children in autocratic, corporate, private sector, no-nonsense, dictatorial, opaque schools that are mostly worse or the same as the public schools they replaced. What Malloy is attempting to do has been done before by other governed that do not support the U.S. republic, state Constitutions and the U.S. Constitution and/or the will of the people.
Without traditional community based democratic public schools, parents are stripped of their power as parents and the only choice that exists is for the corporate charters to cherry pick the students they keep and then harshly abuse those children. The parents end up with no choice and no elected representative to turn to for help and the children are stripped of most if not all of their legal protections.
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So if a state won’t help out a district, then the district should be able eliminate these standardized tests that cost us millions in time and money. Think of the savings!
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I like that idea!
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ONE DISTRICT AT A TIME! 🙂
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TARGO!
😎
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In 2012, CT State Rep Mae Flexer (D Danielson) and Sen Martin Looney (D New Haven) introduced an Earned Income Tax Credit bill in CT. It passed. An EITC gives free cash back to low income/no income CT tax filers. The first year it cost about $120 million dollars. By now well over $500 million has been passed out. Flexer is now a CT State senator. The tax, spend, indebt, and entitle mentality has bankrupted CT and now it’s destroying our schools.
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Governor Malloy’s actions persuade me that he is kind of low-watt bulb. How do you run a $922 million dollar deficit in a state as wealthy as Connecticut? And why would you take it out on education? With Democrats like him, who needs Republicans?
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The deficit points to poor planning and not really understanding the consequences of actions. There are poor fiscal managers on both sides of the aisle.
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Somehow I suspect that poor districts in Connecticut will indeed suffer cutbacks, as ever more money continues to be funneled to “public” charter schools.
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I think you are right, Michael. “Funnel” more money to poor districts who then have to pay it out to the charters leaching off of them.
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Here in our Ohio school district, the state provides us with $550 per pupil each year. If a student in our district goes to a charter or private school, the state provides the charter or private school $1100 for that same student. Yes, here in Ohio, charter and private schools receive more money in state aid per student than my public school district does.
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With all of the intellectual people in the state of Connecticut there must be a way to impeach this governor. Action must be taken swiftly before public education in our state is destroyed as it has already been done in other states.
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Notice how you will never, ever hear about so-called reform groups protesting budget cutbacks and austerity for the public schools, since they know the captive state and local politicians will butter both sides of their bread, no matter what.
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