Schools bracing for cuts, layoffs

Lamont's budget proposal won't help according to researchers

Hundreds of staff members at Connecticut schools could face layoffs as federal pandemic-relief funds expire, and state lawmakers appear unlikely to come to the rescue.

A year after signing off on $150 million in additional funding for K-12 education, Gov. Ned Lamont will seek to redirect some of those funds to early child care, his budget chief said Wednesday.

That idea has already rankled some lawmakers and advocates, who view that money as essential for local school districts that are already struggling financially.

“That would be a disaster with what districts are facing going forward,” said Fran Rabinowitz, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents. “Districts are really dependent on that money.”

For several years, K-12 districts in Connecticut have relied on more than $1 billion of federal money, nearly half of which has gone toward salaries and benefits, according to data from the state’s education department.

Edunomics Lab, a research center based at Georgetown University, has warned that Connecticut school districts will see a 3 percent fiscal cliff this coming fall as a result of expiring pandemic funds, leaving districts millions short of their current operating levels. The issue is expected to be most acute in poorer districts, which benefited disproportionately from pandemic-relief funds.

Lamont, for one, has expressed minimal sympathy for these districts, arguing they were wrong to spend temporary federal money on anything they weren’t willing to sacrifice when

the funds expired. Others have defended the spending decisions, saying highneed schools had little choice but to spend any money available on their most pressing needs, even if that led to a fiscal cliff.

In many Connecticut districts, the grim accounting has already begun. Hartford Superintendent of Schools Leslie Torres-Rodriguez says the district could lose up to 211 positions in 2024-25, as federal funds dry up. In Bridgeport, officials say they’ll need an additional $4 million to cover more than two dozen special education teachers, English language instructors and other key positions currently funded by federal money.

The list goes on. Meriden could lose 44 staff positions, including teachers, tutors, custodians and more. Danbury education officials have asked the city for a 20 percent funding boost to compensate for the loss of federal funds, while Stamford officials are preparing to cut even as they request a budget increase.

It’s not just large cities, either. In West Haven, for example, 11 academic specialists, six outreach workers, 20 part-time cleaners and eight school security guards, as well as staff members covering lunch and recess shifts could be at risk, officials say.

“Unfortunately you see it all across the state,” said Lisa Hammersley, executive director of the School and State Finance Project, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Hamden. “District after district after district is facing significant deficits, and students will definitely be impacted as a result of the elimination of these resources.”

Budget battles ahead

As the federal education money disappears, school districts will look to municipal and state budgets to fill gaps.

Already, district after district has asked for budget increases from their municipal officials, including in wealthy towns with large tax bases such as Darien and New Canaan. Rabinowitz said she hopes some of these municipalities will be able to cover at least a portion of the missing pandemic-relief money.

“We knew that this fiscal cliff was coming,” Rabinowitz said. “We’re just hoping that the municipalities in the state will be — probably not able to give us the full amount, but a little more in the budget.”

As for the state budget: Last year, a group of legislators pushed for $300 million in additional funding to address disparities in K-12 education, before ultimately settling for $150 million. And as recently as October, Rep. Jeff Currey, D-East Hartford, suggested lawmakers could seek more education money in 2024.

But advocates now expect to be playing defense during the legislative session that begins next week, as Lamont seeks to cut K-12 funding and reallocate the money to other areas of need. Despite a revenue surplus, funds will likely be tight this year, as the governor vows to operate within strict fiscal guardrails.

“We’re going to be really critical of any decision to pull back funds,” said Kate Dias, president of the Connecticut Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union. “Given that the education system is the heartbeat of so many communities and the baseline for economic development, it makes no sense to pull back funds at this time.”

Asked about education funding Wednesday, Lamont hinted that he would move some K-12 money to other areas of his budget, which he plans to unveil next week. His budget chief, Jeffrey Beckham, said the $68 million allocated for the educational cost sharing formula is safe but that other education dollars will be rerouted to early child care.

Already, multiple members of the legislature’s education committee have bristled at the idea of cutting promised K-12 funding.

“We can’t do that,” said Sen. Doug McCrory, DHartford, who co-chairs the committee. “You have to make investments early, I get it, but that investment has to carry through to K-12.”

Kathleen McCarty, RWaterford, the committee’s top Republican, said Wednesday she planned to “guard that money,” because “it’s a tremendous need.”

So what happens if municipalities can’t or won’t fill the gaps in education budgets and state lawmakers maintain or even reduce existing funding levels? Many districts will shed support staff, and some will lose classroom teachers as well. Services will disappear, and class sizes will likely grow.

“It puts our principals in positions of having to decide whether to hire a computer technology teacher or a music teacher,” said Carol Gale, president of the Hartford Federation of Teachers. “And I don’t believe that our students deserve to have only one or the other, they should have both.”

Lauren Mancini-Averitt, a high school history teacher in Meriden and president of the teachers union there, said she doesn’t blame district leaders for the coming cuts, given the expiring federal funds. Still, she fears reduced staff and services will ultimately harm students.

“We have to address some of the things that we lost in the pandemic that still aren’t done being fixed,” Mancini-Averitt said. “We need to address what the needs are of students.”

One-time funds

The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief fund, known as ESSER, was created in 2020 (and bolstered in 2021) to help school districts through the COVID-19 pandemic. The money had few conditions attached, and districts in Connecticut and elsewhere used it on a wide range of staff and programs.

According to state data, school districts in Connecticut

have spent nearly $1.3 billion in federal pandemic-relief funds from ESSER and several other, smaller pots of cash. The money was distributed based largely on socioeconomic profiles, meaning poorer Connecticut districts received far more than wealthier ones.

Among other things, districts statewide spent $511 million on salaries, including not only classroom teachers but also support staff such as tutors, counselors, security personnel and more; $63 million on employee benefits; $184 million on supplies; $160 million on property; and $110 million on outside contractors such as architects, engineers, auditors, consultants and accountants.

Over several years, this money has allowed schools to reduce class sizes, increase special education and mental health supports, bolster security, upgrade facilities and more. The catch: All funds have to be spent by September 2024, creating a “fiscal cliff” ahead of the 2024-25 school year.

As some see it, district officials knew the money was meant to be temporary and shouldn’t be surprised by the impending hole in their budgets. At a meeting of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities in November, Lamont downplayed talk of fiscal cliffs.

“You’ll probably going to be hearing something from the your boards of ed, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got a cliff,’ and ‘I know I wasn’t supposed to use all that federal money for operating expenses, but I did use it for that and I need help,’ ” Lamont told municipal leaders, urging caution in how they spend remaining ESSER funds.

Along similar lines, Rabinowitz said districts were wrong to have used temporary federal money to subsidize long-term operating costs.

“I think it was not a mistake to spend the money on interventionists and on tutoring,” Rabinowitz said. “But I do think that if there were staff that normally would be hired out of an operating budget from the municipality, and you moved that stuff into ESSER dollars, then I think that’s a mistake.”

Others, though, see the issue differently. They argue high-need districts had to spend whatever money was available to address urgent problems, regardless of what that meant in the future.

Hammersley, from the School and State Finance Project, said she rejects any attempt to blame poor districts for their spending, noting ongoing disparities between rich districts and poor ones.

“Many of these districts that received the largest amount of federal dollars are also those that have been under-resourced since the beginning of time,” Hammersley said. “If you have the ability to hire more teachers and reduce class sizes to overcome some of the pandemic’s negative impacts, of course you’re going to do that. In fact, those districts should have had smaller class sizes to begin with.”