Ed Advocates To State: Let $ Flow Faster

New Haveners joined teachers, students, and public education allies from across Connecticut for a marathon legislative hearing at which they called for more state funding for school districts that serve the most vulnerable students.

The state legislature’s Appropriations and Education Committees heard hours of testimony on Friday regarding Proposed House Bill 5003, a bill that would accelerate a phased overhaul of school funding so that high-poverty and English language learning districts receive more state funding per student. 

The hearing took place in a hybrid format, both online via video and in-person at the state Legislative Office Building in Hartford.

If passed and signed into law, HB 5003 would speed up the implementation of recently enacted updates to the state’s Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula, an overhaul of the state’s school funding system passed by the state legislature in 2017. Lawmakers originally planned to phase in the new ECS formula over the course of 10 years, through Fiscal Year 2028. HB 5003 would accelerate that timeline so that underfunded districts would receive full ECS funding under the new formula by Fiscal Year 2025.

$3.7M More By 2025

The ECS formula works by first calculating a theoretical cost of educating every student. Each child is allotted a baseline cost of $11,525, plus an additional 30 percent for students receiving free or reduced lunch; another 15 percent for those students whose school districts are at least 60 percent comprised of students who receive reduced lunch; and 25 percent for students who are English language learners. Unlike previous funding mechanisms, ECS allocates more funding for ​“high-need” students.

Then, ECS determines how much of this cost should be covered by the state and how much should be covered by each municipality, based on the amount of taxable property and the area median income in each locality.

This formula amounts to a redistribution of resources from school districts where students have more resources and to districts where students are more likely to be struggling. 

In New Haven — where according to city leaders and school officials, 70 percent of students are low income and 18 percent are English language learners — the new formula, when fully phased in, could result in about $3.7 million more annual funding than what New Haven schools received in 2022. 

(The bill as a whole would bring $19 million in additional funding to New Haven, due to a restructuring of how magnet, charter, agriscience, and school choice schools are funded.)

That would bring New Haven’s total ECS grant award from its FY 2022 total of around $162.8 million to around $166.5 million by FY 2025 (instead of by FY 2028).

Proponents of HB 5003 are advocating for this new funding system to be phased in more quickly, by 2025 — partly so that school districts can extend programs and positions currently funded by the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) once that federal aid expires.

"Equity Requires Revenue"

Testifying in favor of the bill by Zoom on Friday, Mayor Justin Elicker told the state lawmakers that New Haven’s school district includes a disproportionate number of low-income, immigrant, and housing insecure students compared to most other districts in the state.

“Any reasonable person would say that we have to spend more on children facing these extreme challenges,” said Elicker. ​“In Connecticut, we do the opposite.”

New Haven Board of Education Vice Chair Matt Wilcox also testified Friday. He spoke to a particular need in New Haven for more funding, citing teachers and staff who have fled to other districts for higher salaries and behavioral challenges that the pandemic exacerbated in schools. 

“If you want to see a large percentage of children exposed to trauma, sometimes horrific trauma, come to New Haven,” he implored lawmakers. ​“As one of the wealthiest states in this country, one with a multi-billion dollar surplus, Connecticut really doesn’t have an excuse.”

Wilcox’s and Elicker’s calls were echoed by New Haven educators.

“Equity requires revenue, and Connecticut has failed to fund public education in an equitable way,” argued New Haven Federation of Teachers’ President Leslie Blatteau during Friday’s hearing. ​“Real equity means our Pre‑k through 12 public schools are fully staffed with public workers, who speak multiple languages and meet the needs of every child in every community.”

In pre-submitted testimony, New Haven paraprofessional Luz Guzman wrote, ​“New Haven schools need funds, and those funds must go toward attracting and retaining adequate staffing. When we’re not getting paid what we should be, it’s the students that lose out ultimately.”

Elm City Montessori Magnet Resource Teacher Dave Weinreb posited that additional funding could go toward school libraries with ​“identity-affirming books” along with other meaningful resources: ​“We can flood our schools with mental health support, with counselors, with social workers. To me, equity means that instead of scarcity, we can run our schools with bounty.”

NHPS Supt. Iline Tracey also submitted written testimony in support of the bill. ​“We face a critical need to better fund teacher salaries,” she wrote. ​“We must make a sustained investment if we are to address a substantial shortage of classroom teachers. We cannot do it with the funding that is currently available. The national teacher shortage has left us with vacancies at times approaching 10 percent of our teacher corps. Due to budget constraints, our starting teacher salaries have lagged behind even urban districts such as Bridgeport and Hartford. We are losing teachers to neighboring suburban districts that can afford to pay more.” She wrote that this proposed bill, if passed, could help address some of those needs.

Some testifiers called on legislators to go beyond the ECS formula and provide more funding for high-need school districts.

Hartford paraprofessional Shellye Davis argued that the per-student funding established by ECS isn’t enough. ​“What does it actually cost to educate a child in Connecticut?” she asked. ​“We are missing an important opportunity to get this right.”

Responding to her testimony, New Haven State Rep. Robyn Porter agreed. ​“This is a work in progress,” she said of the bill, noting that ​“equality and equity are two different things: equal funding doesn’t equate to equity.”

One crucial component of the bill would recalibrate funding for inter-district schools like magnet schools and agriscience programs according to the ECS formula, rather than relying on the multitude of state grants that currently fund those schools. If HB 5003 passes, magnet schools will also receive funding based on the needs of their students — enabling them to avoid charging tuition to the municipalities where their students come from.

"Our Magnet Schools Are At Risk"

Dozens of magnet, agriscience, and technical education students from across the state appeared in the Capitol and on Zoom to testify for this funding stream for their schools. 

Deasha Lopez, who attends a magnet school in East Hartford, said that before she enrolled in her current school, she felt like ​“the doors to a successful education were closed for me.”

“I love attending this school,” Lopez said. ​“Our magnet schools are at risk without sustainable funding.”

The bill would pay magnet schools the ECS-determined cost per student, while also paying each magnet student’s home district that same amount, in a system that some referred to as ​“double-funding.”

Critics, including a handful of Republican lawmakers on the committee, questioned this component of the bill. 

“I’m trying to wrap my head around paying for a seat in a school that a child doesn’t attend,” said Killingly State Rep. Anne Dauphinais.

Lisa Hammersley, the executive director of School + State Finance Project, an organization that is championing the bill, explained that the home district of magnet school students is responsible for those students’ transportation and potential special education services. The ​“double funding” measure aims to cover those expenses. She said that in many districts, the costs of transportation and special education even surpasses the funding that the district would receive from the ECS formula.

Hammersley added, ​“If the student decides to pop out of their school choice system, their resident district has an obligation to accept them.”

East Hartford State Rep. Jeffrey Curry asked Hammersley about her personal connection to the bill.

“Growing up I was raised by a single mom. We got evicted more than once a year. I lived in 26 different apartments from birth to age 17,” Hammersley recalled. She learned from a wide variety of school districts as a child. ​“When I happened to live in New Britain, the school was very different than the school I was lucky to attend in Southington,” she said.