Enrollment

pil funding is part of the reason. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy faced a massive backlash in the General Assembly this year when he proposed shifting $400 million in annual employer pension payments from the state, back to the towns and cities where the teachers work.

Even with 10 percent to 20 percent enrollment losses, towns want to maintain levels of state education aid, he complained.

“What you hear from them is ‘oh 10 percent is not enough for us to really cut our costs.’” Malloy said in a recent interview. “But I imagine a 10 percent increase would be a big reason to raise your spending.” He said that placating the folks back home seems the goal — and one of the shortcomings — of the General Assembly.

“So, all the non-profits, all the hospitals, all the municipalities, all the other boards of education, everybody has to be held harmless of any (funding) reduction, even when it would only reflect that school districts have lost 20 percent of their population,” Malloy said. “That’s unreasonable and that’s where we are.”

Daniel Long, senior education policy fellow at Connecticut Voices for Children

in New Haven, said the disparity in Connecticut’s education funding is growing.

“These disparities in wealth and the need to provide city services and fund city schools leads to an increased burden on families in the poorest urban communities,” he said. “In the largest five towns in the state, there has been over the last 10 years a decline in enrollment by 2 percent. For the rest of the towns in the state, the decline has been about 14 percent.”

However, the per capita funding for those five largest towns has increased 13 percent in that time, and in other districts it has increased 35 percent, he said.

Long said some anecdotal reasons why enrollment may be increasing in recent years are because urban centers tend to be younger with higher birth rates.

“There’s a net migration out of Connecticut, but there’s also a migration out of its urban areas as well,” he said. “There’s more going on than just enrollment trends.”

School officials’ perspective

Local education administrators say that school choice, which has increased over the last 10 years, is part of the local census calculus.

Middletown’s Charles said that district lost an increasing number of students

to other districts’ magnet schools beginning in 2012, which leveled out around 400 students in 2014.

Charles said she believes the decline in enrollment presents a financial worry for the district, but she thinks the best remedy is to improve the quality of the schools.

“I think we need to continue to look at our curriculum and how we’re engaging students and parents, and making sure everyone feels they’re part of the process so they’re invested in the public schools,” she said.

Charles said there has been a somewhat surprising glimmer of hope: kindergarten enrollment in Middletown is at its highest in years. “I can’t explain it based on the projection that was given to us, but it’s bigger than we were expecting,” she said.

This fall, Shelton is down another 65 students, most of whom are attending Fairchild Wheeler in Bridgeport or one of New Haven’s magnet schools.

“The marketplace for schools has changed considerably,” said Chris Clouet, Shelton’s school superintendent, where overall enrollment has fallen more than 6 percent. “There are just more options than there were.”

“I do think if the magnet schools hadn’t opened we would have a higher

enrollment in Shelton,” Clouet said, noting a recent increase in new housing units. “We do anticipate the shrinking will stop,” Clouet added.

Carol Merlone, school superintendent in Ansonia, also said she believes open choice and magnet schools have contributed to the decline in the district’s enrollment by 5.7 percent.

“This past year with the renovation of Emmett O’Brien, some of our 8th graders who would have normally come to AHS decided to try the technical route,” she said in an email.

Spending per-pupil in Ansonia is $13,217.

In Bridgeport, where the numbers never stopped rising, the increase is partially due to the inter-district magnet schools, which over five years has added 600 suburban kids to the district’s roster. At the same time, however, Bridgeport lost 2,754 students it would otherwise be educating to six charter schools in the city.

Even though enrollment hasn’t mattered much when the state calculates its Education Cost Sharing formula, it does matter in determining how many teachers and classrooms a district needs. “There are fewer women of child bearing age, people are getting older and the housing stock is not turning over as fast,”

said James Richetelli, a former Milford mayor and now chief operating officer of its schools.

As Milford’s enrollment has shrunk by 10 percent over the past five years, its per-pupil expenditure has increased — to $18,732 — because even though the district has cut staff, other expenses can’t be cut in proportion, Richetelli said.

The school population decrease was 11.4 percent in Monroe, where Schools Superintendent John Battista said an earlier demographic study predicted the district would lose 100 students.

“The demographer said that it was happening across the state,” Battista said. “He looked at the house sales and hypothesized that because older residents were not selling their homes, younger people with families were not moving into the town.”

Still, the decrease over the past two years has been smaller than was predicted in Monroe.

Danbury Schools Superintendent Sal Pascarella said that district’s increase is because families choose to move there.

“It has a growing population from diverse backgrounds and a reputation for positive school climate for families,’ Pascarella said. “The city is also a safe city and the greater Danbury area provides access to employment

for adults while being the most economically affordable housing in Fairfield county.”

Malloy, who has been pushing the General Assembly to provide more funding for city schools at the expense of richer suburbs, stressed that a pending court case is forcing Connecticut to address racial impacts in the underperforming urban districts.

“We asked Danbury, Stamford and Norwalk to educate a very high percentage of our children that have special needs, who live in public housing, who are poor or living near the poverty line,” Malloy said. “We have to support those systems in the same way that we support a Hartford, or Bridgeport or New Haven, who we also ask to do those things as well. Those systems need to be concentrated on going forward, to an even greater degree than we have in the past.”

Casey Cobb, a professor of educational policy at the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education, noted that among many possible reasons leading to the decrease in enrollment trends, including an aging population and continuing out-migration stemming from the 2009 recession, there is out-migration to other locales that may be more prosperous in terms of job markets.