The School + State Finance Project – a non-partisan education policy organization with a mission “to develop data-driven solutions that ensure all public school students receive equitable education funding that supports their learning needs” – is raising a red flag about millions in budget cuts they say will affect Kindergarten through high school (K-12) students and the districts they attend.
A draft budget adjustment released by the Lamont administration on Wednesday includes nearly $62 million in cuts for K-12 programs. Most of those cuts – $47.9 million – are coming from the state’s Education Finance Reform line item and shifting the allocation to other education programs.
Among the changes is a removal of the tuition cap (currently set at 58% of total tuition) for magnet and vocational agriculture sending districts, which places a higher cost burden on districts, as do cuts to OpenChoice programs – which allow students to attend a participating school outside their district.
According to Michael Morton, the Deputy Executive Director for Communications & Operations at the School + State Finance Project, that loss is going to mean budget problems for school districts.
“What the governor has done is he’s taken away that funding,” says Morton. “He has put the cost burden back on to municipalities and districts, and, ultimately, the backs of property taxpayers. And it continues this problematic relationship between different public-school types, where you have different school types competing for resources against one another.”
If municipalities have to find a way to cover the bill, Morton says they will face greater fiscal hardship going into the next school year than they already face with pandemic-era funding drying up in 2025.
“What we’re seeing across the state […] is every community is facing this fiscal cliff where it’s a choice now for residents and taxpayers of knowing that student needs are continuing to be there, the impacts of the pandemic on students are not going to go away magically when federal funding goes away,” says Morton. “So do we keep these programs that we invested in to help students overcome learning loss, to meet the growing demand of mental health needs in communities, or do we cut those?”
So where is the money cut from K-12 programs going? Mostly to daycare and early childhood education. According to Morton, this isn’t a simple matter of one program having a higher need than another, but of overburdened educational systems sharing a too small pool of funds.
“The childcare system in Connecticut is also something that has been in dire need of funding and resources too,” explains Morton. “We never want to see a pitting of child against child, because it’s not going to help anything. If you take money away from K-12 to fund daycare, then once that student gets to K-12, there’s still a lack of resources for them.”
According to the Census Bureau, Connecticut has the third highest per-pupil spending of the 50 States at $22,769.
Morton argues there should be a re-evaluation of the state’s budget process.
“We’re having an ongoing conversation about how — with the fiscal guardrails — that does put a significant handcuff on the legislature and the budget,” he says. “Are we funding everything that we need to be? Are the fiscal guardrails keeping us in a place that is financially responsible and sustainable, or are we kind of starving ourselves?”
Morton says, to him and his colleagues, the answer isn’t going to be one or the other, but rather some kind of middle ground between.
The fiscal guardrails were put in place to help keep Connecticut from falling further into debt, keeping spending at a specific level, forcing surpluses to go first to the state’s rainy day fund, and allowing the Office of the State Comptroller to use revenue from Wall Street to pay down outstanding pension debt. The plan has allowed the state to pay back billions of dollars over the last eight years and saved taxpayers hundreds of millions. But those payments will have to continue for about 25 more years before the debt is completely paid off, and many want to use the surpluses of the past few years to either fund state programs or provide greater tax cuts for residents.
Morton, like the rest of the state, won’t know how the budget will ultimately shake out until the end of this year’s (shortened) legislative session, but these budget changes will likely be a major point of debate on the floor of the General Assembly.
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