Bridgeport officials urge more school funding
BRIDGEPORT — The “ask” is big. The consequences could be bigger if the city school board doesn’t get the budget it says it needs to run the district in the 2020-21 school year.
That was the salvo launched Thursday by Acting Schools Superintendent Michael Testani, hosting his first school budget forum.
“The plan now is to be a little bit patient,” said Testani. At a certain point, he added, officials will need to understand what services could be eliminated if the district doesn’t get at least $14.5 million — a 5.7 percent boost — in additional funding.
Cutting more administrative positions at the schools won’t close the budget gap, Testani said. It hasn’t in the past. Neither has the elimination of kindergarten aides, math and reading coaches, guidance counselors, alternative education programs or home school coordinators.
“We need something that will finally get people’s attention,” he said.
Testani is not prepared to say what will go, but promised it will have high impact.
Members of the light audience — about 20 people including three school board members — seemed to be in agreement.
“My opinion is it is not going to happen just because we ask,” George Markley, a long-time school volunteer in the district, said.
Markley pointed out that the district got a last-minute $1.4 million from the city to keep existing school transportation levels only because of the uproar that was caused when parents learned how much farther their kids would have to walk to school.
“You are not going to get five cents without serious pressure,” Markley said, advocating that an effective game plan be developed.
A $14.5 million boost would give the district of 20,130 students an operating budget of $266.4 million, enough to maintain existing programs and staff, district officials said. Two weeks ago, however, the school board voted to ask the city and state for even more — a $50 million increase, enough to make up for five years of budget cuts.
The cuts came because, although the district got average budget increases of 1 percent a year and costs to maintain current services, costs rose much higher. In all, 243 positions have been cut.
Last year, the board considered school consolidations but eventually dismissed the idea.
Testani said with $50 million more, the district could begin to add back positions and programs lost, beginning with kindergarten aides to put a second adult in classrooms of 24 5-year-olds in school for the first time.
Still, he called such a request lofty and unlikely.
Parents whose children attend the Fairchild Wheeler Interdistrict Magnet School asked about potential new funding streams promised the state from the Dalio Foundation.
Testani said so far, none of that funding has been pledged or earmarked for Bridgeport.
He also doesn’t put much stock in getting additional help from the federal government, he said.
“If the feds funded special education fully, we wouldn’t need another dime from the state or the city,” said Testani. “I don’t see anything coming down the pike.”
Nearly one-third of the operating budget goes to special education.
Although the district hopes to get at least a $7.5 million increase from the state, the governor’s budget gives them less than a $3 million boost.
Testani said he hopes this year the city — both the mayor and City Council — will step up. During his reelection bid last year, Mayor Joseph Ganim pledged to better fund the school district.
If the increase can’t come in the form of a cash contribution, Testani said he would not be opposed to the city absorbing the cost of school security officers and nurses, which he called the responsibility of public safety and health, not the schools.
The next forum will be held at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Batalla School, 606 Howard Ave.