The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
GOP candidates call for school choice
Pols debate best way to close state achievement gap
NEW CANAAN — Republican candidates for governor took a page out of their national counterparts’ playbook when they addressed education for the first time in a debate.
The majority of the nine candidates on stage at a public middle school advocated school choice, though they never explicitly used the phrase “voucher system.”
“Families who are in low-performing schools should have the opportunity to take that money that they have in the (state) education savings account and go to the school that they choose to go to,” said state Rep. Prasad Srinivasan, a Glastonbury physician.
Former U.S. Comptroller Dave Walker, of Bridgeport, said he’d like to see school districts consolidate duplicated resources to re-allocate funding and offer more school choice.
“We have to provide more choice, we have to provide more options,” Walker said. “Not everybody is bound for college, not every college degree is equal. We have tremendous needs in regards to the trades and technical areas. ... We need to put that money to better use it to educate our kids and give them more opportunity.”
The businessmen in the group advocated school choice as well.
“As a business person, I understand the importance of choice, of markets and of financial incentives,” said David Stemerman, a hedgefund millionaire from Greenwich.
Westport businessman Steve Obsitnik said he would use his experience as a CEO to gather a team of education experts to solve the problem.
“As a CEO, I don’t know all the answers, but we
bring teams together,” he said. “We do have choice in this state. It’s called moving. The injustice are people who can’t afford to move and are stuck in systems that aren’t getting what they need. Funding is key, school choice is key.”
Albanian-born Fairfield lawyer Peter Lumaj blamed Democrats and the teachers union for the state’s achievement gap.
“The Republicans should have the backbone to go to the cities and point out their failure to turn this around,” he said. “What that means is you give the kids, the parents, the choice of taking their kids from a failing school to a non-failing school within the district so that their kid can succeed. Does it mean competition? Yes. Does it mean some public schools collapse and close down? Yes.”
Tim Herbst, the son of public educators in Trumbull where he previously served as first selectman, stayed away from the topic of school choice.
“You don’t close the achievement gap just by focusing on when school starts and when school ends,” he said. “It takes a community effort. You close that achievement gap working around the clock with parents and teachers and school officials and community leaders. It’s about investing in after school programs to keep these kids off the street, it’s about keeping them engaged. It’s to make sure our urban teachers and educators have the resources they need to make sure they’re teaching in a safe environment. It’s not just about money, but it’s also about accountability.”
Shelton Mayor Mark Lauretti said the state should focus on improving parent-student-teacher relationships, how money is allocated to schools and student safety in inner-city schools. He also criticized the State Board of Education for eliminating the industrial arts program across the state.
“Unless we make the schools safer and the streets in the inner cities safer, we’re not going to get the results that we want because kids are intimidated on their way to school,” Lauretti said. “And it’s a fact. Because when the inner cities are running like the wild west, it’s a big distraction for kids.”
Stamford CFO and father of four Mike Handler called for public-private partnerships to develop curriculum and talent pipelines for companies in the state, like Stamford-based NBC Sports. He also said the state should focus more on early childhood education.
“The truth is we are putting way too much emphasis on the last four years of a student’s education than we are on the first four years of a student’s education,” Handler said. “I can’t think of anything that’s more sad than sending a five year old to kindergarten that’s not ready for kindergarten.”