The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
School year nears amid uncertainty
MERIDEN » School leaders from around the state used an annual back-to-school gathering on Tuesday to demand that the governor and legislature pass a state budget.
The lack of a spending plan two months into the fiscal year and just a few weeks before school opens would cause irreparable damage to the state’s 500,000 public school children, warned a letter that school superintendents lined up to sign at Maloney High School in Meriden.
“(Having) no state budget at this point in time is a crucial obstacle to opening school,” said Fran Rabinowitz, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents and Bridgeport’s former interim superintendent of schools.
Rabinowitz and others said uncertainty is casting a pall on what should be a feeling of excitement that comes with the opening of schools.
Rob Rader, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, added the lack of fiscal stability threatens to erase all the gains the state has made over the past few years in raising graduation rates, SAT scores and math performance.
“The later (a budget is passed), the more schools will suffer,” Rader said.
Meg Green, a spokeswoman for Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, responded to the letter by saying the governor’s office could not agree more with the urgency of the situation.
“As Governor Malloy has said many times, the Executive Order Resource Allocation Plan was not his preference, but unfortunately, the Legislature did not elect to take up the mini-budget that would have made drastic cuts to municipalities less severe,” Green said.
Planning for challenges
At the crux of the stalemate is a crushing $5 billion deficit over the next biennium. Malloy’s June 30 executive order would cut the state’s $2 billion Education Cost Sharing grant by $500 million.
Some districts, such as Torrington, will delay the start of the school year, something that city’s Superintendent of Schools Denise Clemons said would help the city with its cash flow.
Districts such as Bridgeport are using a worst-case list of cuts as a jumping-off point. Bridgeport Superintendent of Schools Aresta Johnson acknowledged she is closing a two-year alternative education high school she helped create and also cutting 10 literacy coaches — to start.
“I don’t think legislators understand, when you drill it down to an individual school, how this will play out,” said Danbury Superintendent of Schools Sal Pascarella. “Kids can start school in September with their teachers. They make connections and then classes are combined or reduced. It can really interrupt education.”
Gary Peluchette, a teacher of 32 years in Bridgeport, said that for him, this is sadly nothing new.
“Every year I see programs cut and every year we are asked to make sure our students succeed, that ‘it isn’t always about funding,’” said Peluchette, president of the Bridgeport Education Association. But without a dedicated and reliable funding source, Peluchette said, classrooms wouldn’t have supplies, teachers or even electricity.
Earlier Tuesday morning, state Commissioner of Education Dianna Wentzell offered as optimistic an address as she could muster, at what is traditionally an upbeat kick off for a new school year.
She called it an extraordinary time.
“Long-standing uncertainty regarding state funding coupled with uncertainty regarding federal policy create conditions for leadership that are certainly not for the faint of heart,” she told school superintendents spread out across the spacious Maloney High auditorium. “And yet, you persevere.”
Still aiming high
Wentzell said that even amid fiscal uncertainty, Connecticut school districts can deliver on the promise of an excellent education. It is an opinion that was rejected last year when a superior court judge ruled the state was not meeting its constitutional responsibility in distributing education funding. The state has appealed that case to the state Supreme Court.
State Board of Education Chairman Allan Taylor told the school chiefs that while his board doesn’t have the power to give districts money, it would, to the extent it is authorized, consider regulatory waivers to deal with the problems created by late and diminished appropriations.
Afterward, Stratford Superintendent of Schools Janet Robinson said hearing some optimism was heartening.
“There are so many pessimistic, negative things going on budget-wise,” Robinson said. “The state doesn’t have a budget. Stratford doesn’t have a budget. But the kids are coming. We will do the work we need to do and get it done.”
Green said the governor would be re-evaluating how aid to communities would be distributed under the executive order in the coming weeks.
“We have been clear that municipalities should not make assumptions about their level of education funding in the absence of an adopted biennial budget,” Green said. “At the same time, the governor remains committed to safeguarding funding to the greatest extent possible in communities with concentrated pockets of poverty and the highest student needs.”