The below op-ed by CEA President Kate Dias was published by Hearst CT Newspapers Sept. 25, 2026. Read the opinion piece.
With a federal school voucher program set to go into effect Jan. 1, private equity is poised to take over one of our country’s most critical institutions: public education. Connecticut has an opportunity to push back.
Private equity, which takes over public services, extracts profits, and leaves taxpayers holding the bag when those services fail, has already heavily infiltrated a number of states’ education systems.
Connecticut has seen firsthand what private equity does to essential services. Look no further than the closure of Connecticut hospitals, nursing homes, apartment buildings, and grocery stores that have left thousands without access to housing, food, and health care. If our state opts into the federal voucher program, private equity will expand its foothold in our public schools.
Private equity firms operate through pooled funds and debt financing to acquire companies. Those funds must pay out returns to investors within a decade, essentially placing a time bomb on the acquired company. The company is saddled with debt and grown as fast as possible. Massive cuts are made to its resources and core staff, and its real estate is then sold to extract immediate financial gain. The company itself is sold within five to seven years. For private equity, the formula is low risk, high rewards. For communities, the outcome is devastating.
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, who has introduced a series of bills to address private equity takeovers of public services, sums it up this way: “Private equity’s general business model is pretty simple: find hospitals that are in dire financial straits, make promises to fix things, and then squeeze every cent they can out of patients before leaving communities to deal with the wreckage.”
In Trumbull and Wallingford, two private equity-owned nursing homes closed because of compounding instances of “immediate jeopardy” — imminent risk of injury, harm, or death. Three Connecticut hospitals owned by private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners and its multistate system Prospect Medical faced similar catastrophes: Waterbury Hospital patients left open on the operating table for 45 minutes due to supply shortages and restrictions; broken elevators and overnight shifts unstaffed by doctors at Manchester Memorial Hospital; the termination of intensive care and surgical units at Rockville Hospital in Vernon.
Prospect Medical took out a $1.12 billion loan partially to pay down existing debt and pay out $457 million to investors. It then sold the real estate of nearly all its hospitals and two psychiatric facilities for $1.55 billion, adding rent obligations that did not previously exist for these facilities. Leonard Green & Partners later sold Prospect Medical, and within a few years the hospital system declared bankruptcy amid a spate of unsettled wrongful death and medical malpractice lawsuits.
If we are not vigilant, and vocal, this is what’s coming for our public schools.
Year after year, by every measure, Connecticut ranks among the top states for public education. Unlike states consistently ranked at the bottom — all of which allow school vouchers — one of the key things top-ranked states have in common is a rejection of school vouchers, which open the door to private equity siphoning public school dollars.
Leonard Green & Partners now owns The Stepping Stones Group, a special education staffing company for various Connecticut school districts. Both the Hartford and New London boards of education signed off on a two-year noncompete-like agreement with Stepping Stones in their hiring of paraeducators and special education teachers, respectively. This means school districts are prevented from directly hiring their own certified staff into permanent positions with the school district, exacerbating educator shortages. Stepping Stones has already settled a lawsuit alleging wage theft for $4.25 million.
Private equity-owned FEV Tutor was once on the Connecticut State Department of Education’s approved list of vendors for high-dosage tutoring. Yet the tutoring company shut down abruptly mid-school year, leaving school districts and families scrambling across 30 states for a new provider.
As special education need increases, private equity-owned companies are circling it in ways similar to health care. It’s not hard to imagine what this dangerous future will look like. Under voucher designs, entire special education departments could be operated by private equity-owned staffing companies. Just as private equity firms drove surprise medical bills, vouchers open the door to surprise education bills for families in areas such as tutoring and transportation services that far exceed any allotted voucher amount.
At first glance, the federal tax credit states are being asked to opt into looks like free money, including funds for public schools. Follow the money, however, and you’ll see that a school voucher scheme disguised as a federal tax credit would privatize Connecticut’s public schools from the inside out. Chronic underfunding of our schools has made us vulnerable to private equity, and vouchers will only make private equity and its predatory practices a permanent feature of our education system.
Governors have until Dec. 31 to decide whether to opt in. Connecticut must say no to giveaways to private equity, and yes to fully staffed and funded public schools.
More on private equity’s threat, as well as recommendations for protecting the integrity of Connecticut public schools, can be found in the policy brief “Private Equity in Connecticut K-12 Education” at cea.org/private-equity-ct-schools/.
