Education leaders and early childhood advocates gathered at the Legislative Office Building today to push back on Governor Ned Lamont’s plan to pull millions of dollars earmarked for Connecticut’s K-12 schools. The governor’s proposal would reallocate $36 million set aside by the legislature for K-12 education and use it to subsidize child care instead.
While stakeholders agree that funding for child care is critical, they also point out that those investments should be made in addition to—not at the expense of—public education.
“We can—and we should—do both,” said Representative Jeff Currey, co-chair of the legislature’s Education Committee, “and we’re here in solidarity to ensure that promises made are promises kept.”
“It’s distressing that we have to once again come back to the microphone and demand to be properly funded,” said CEA President Kate Dias. “The rhetoric in our state has long been, ‘We love our teachers. We care about our schools. We want progress. We want equitable opportunities for all of our children…but hey, can we do it with a coupon?’” When it comes to education, she said, “We cannot have a dollar store mentality.”
“Towns are making difficult decisions right now,” said Leonard Lockhart, president of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education (CABE), who asked the governor to work with legislators to support “every single child in the state of Connecticut.”
Dr. Leslie Torres-Rodriguez, second vice president of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents (CAPSS), noted, “CAPSS fully endorses the funding and programming in the education plan.” By moving that funding around, she said, the governor’s proposal would shift a substantial cost burden back onto school districts, particularly in historically disadvantaged and marginalized communities. Torres-Rodriguez, who is superintendent of Hartford Public Schools, said the shift would have “a direct impact on the resources provided to our young people, our students.”
Pitting one against the other
“We all have a desire to make sure all our kids are properly educated,” said Senator Douglas McCrory, who co-chairs the Education Committee. “In order for that to happen, we need resources.”
Representative Michelle Cooke emphasized that K-12 education should not be pitted against early childhood services; all investments, she said, are critical. “Every child is most important.”
Education Committee ranking member Senator Eric Berthel said the group’s singular mission is to “uphold the promise that this legislative body agreed to on a largely bipartisan manner, and that the governor signed, to properly fund education in Connecticut. That is the bottom line, and that is why we are all in this room today.”
“I was so proud last session that we made a historic investment in education,” said fellow Education Committee ranking member Representative Kathleen McCarty. “We took a long, hard look at how we could support our districts and the various sources of education funding, and I was so pleased to see that we had a way to fund all of our schools and erase the disparate funding sources. Today I stand in unity with my colleagues here in saying we need to do something about the restoration of funding that will work for all of our students.” The loss of nearly $40 million from a $150 million block of funding for K-12 public schools, she said, “translates to a loss of services and programs when we have a heightened need to protect our students, including their mental health, behavioral, and special education needs.
While she commended the governor for recognizing the value of funding early child care, Eva Bermudez Zimmerman, coalition director of Child Care for Connecticut’s Future, clarified, “Not if it’s on the backs of other children. Not if it’s on the backs of K-12 teachers, who have sacrificed. Child care services need money now,” she said, “but we need to fairly fund all students. That includes early care all the way through twelfth grade. It doesn’t mean that you take one pot of money and give it to another and say the job is done.”
Education: the centerpiece of our communities
“At the end of the day, education is not some liability that we are saddled with,” said Dias. It’s an asset that is the centerpiece of our economic development. It’s the centerpiece of our community development. It’s the anchor for everything that is possible for the state of Connecticut, and if we don’t understand that and instead continue to question the investment, we will never be the state we could be. Our children will never have the opportunities we want them to have, and our teachers will never be able to do the things we want and know we can do.”
The resulting cuts from the governor’s plan, she said, would strip away the people who matter tremendously to children’s lives and their success—from teachers to guidance counselors, cafeteria workers, and paraeducators—people who reach out and say, ‘I see you, I care, and I’m going to take care of you.’
“These cuts don’t strip pencils and paper clips. You’re not going to make up $40 million by telling teachers to make their own copies at Staples—which, by the way, with an average starting salary of $48,000 would be an offensive request.”
Applauding the historic investments in education passed by the last legislature and signed into law by the governor, Connecticut Conference of Municipalities Executive Director Joe Delong said, “It’s time to take that bill from last year and all that good work the General Assembly did and not tear it apart to shift priorities, but build on it. Build on that momentum to do more, because right now, we can do more.” Referencing the state’s budget surplus as one of many sources of additional funding, Delong noted, “The reality is when you take that money away, you’re left with all the things that Kate spoke about—deep and painful cuts.”
