EDITORIAL Thumbs up, thumbs down

to the continuation of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Connecticut. The 46th annual event was held over the weekend at the Stamford Marriott Hotel and was won by Paolo Pasco of Brooklyn, N.Y. The event draws nearly 1,000 competitors from around the world, including puzzlers from Australia, Canada, France, Germany and England. to the Blue Sky animation studio that used to be based in Greenwich collecting $144 million in film tax credits from Connecticut it was not entitled to, according to a new audit. The fault seems to be with the state Department of Economic and Community Development, which awarded Blue Sky a $94.4 million film production tax credit for fiscal years 2017 through 2020, which it wasn’t eligible for because it previously received a production tax credit. The error was then repeated in the amount of $50.1 million for fiscal years 2021 and 2022. Blue Sky, which produced hits such as “Ice Age,” was closed after it was purchased by Disney. , and heads up and down, to Monday’s rare eclipse uniting residents to collectively experience a science lesson. Whether people were gathering at local libraries or science centers to watch it through special glasses, or having fun with cereal boxes in their backyards, it was a change of pace from most Mondays, even one that ended with the University of Connecticut men’s basketball team playing in the NCAA title game. to Connecticut Foodshare receiving a federal grant that will allow it to offer about 2 million more meals a year. The $2 million grant will pay for an expansion of the agency’s frozen storage facilities in Wallingford, which sends food to more than 600 local pantries across Connecticut. to allergy season hitting Connecticut hard. According to a UConn health expert, tree pollen is in the moderate to high range, which is likely why so many people are sneezing and rubbing their eyes.

SUSAN CAMPBELL

Hartford drew Alison Schroeder more than 20 years ago, when the school system offered incentives for special education teachers.

The job was a natural fit. When she was in high school in Canton, Schroeder signed up to work for a program with her local ARC, where once a week she took developmentally disabled children horseback riding. Later, in college, she worked at a local sheltered workshop, and then with people with traumatic brain injuries.

For most of her career, Schroeder has worked in a program that serves students who have survived trauma, often multiple and ongoing trauma. Those early incentives brought her to Hartford, but she stayed because she loves the programs and her students.

Meanwhile, legislators are hammering out a budget. The budget offered by Gov. Ned Lamont in February was labeled “inequitable” by education advocates, who worry the proposals would hurt most students of color and districts where they learn.

So what’s a dedicated teacher to do? Recently Schroeder did what she’s often done, which is take to DonorsChoose.org to solicit donations, this time to buy STEM kits. DonorsChoose is a nonprofit website where people can donate money to specific teachers and classrooms. While we await equality in education — and we have been waiting forever — this stop-gap measure was created in 2000 by former teacher Charles Best, who dreamed up DonorsChoose while making a 5 a.m. run to Staples (which has become a major donor) to run off copies of “Little House on the Prairie” for his students.

Mrs. Schroeder’s class was my most recent donation, but I often ask myself why teachers have to solicit donations for classroom supplies. The process makes as much sense to me as people taking to GoFundMe

to pay their medical bills. And it’s pretty telling when you look at the teachers who use such donation websites; they tend to work at low-resource schools in poor neighborhoods. You don’t often find teachers from any of, say, Connecticut’s wealthier towns on these sites.

While 5 a.m. Staples runs may be unusual, teachers spending their own money to keep the wheels rolling in the classroom is far too common, and the poorer the school, the more teachers need help educating their children. DonorsChoose says teachers at 88% of the country’s public schools have posted projects on their website.

But if you live in a wealthy town, our state’s method of funding public education has all but dug a moat around your child’s school and stocked the waters with fat fish.

The National Center for Education Statistics says Connecticut is among the country’s four states that rely most heavily on property tax revenue (Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine are also on the list) to keep public school classrooms running. The state frequently shows up as a poster child on how not to fund public education. In February, the non-partisan think tank New America released a report that looked at property taxes of neighboring school districts where one was wealthy, and the other was not. Of the nation’s 300 least-equal school system borders, 23 are in Connecticut. The state’s most unequal border is HartfordSouth Windsor.

This is not to say that children in poorer schools can’t get a great education. They absolutely can, but their teachers are up against far more challenges than they should be to deliver that education.

We could — and should — do better. In 2016, Thomas G. Moukawsher, a Superior Court judge, wrote in a decision for “Connecticut Coalition For Justice in Education Funding Inc. v. Rell” that the state’s education system is “irrational” and that it violated students’ constitutional rights to “an adequate education.” The state appealed, and in 2018 the state Supreme Court overruled the lower court’s decision, saying, in part, “It is not the function of the courts to eliminate all the societal deficiencies that continue to frustrate the state’s educational efforts.”

In recent years, the Connecticut state legislature has allocated millions to try to balance school inequality, but the system remains locked in place. So courts haven’t helped, and legislators have done only so much, and what more should we expect? This is a state that took 30 years to settle the landmark school segregation case, “Sheff v. O’Neill.”Milo Sheff was 10 when his mother, Elizabeth Horton Sheff, filed the lawsuit. He is now a grandfather. Sheff and generations of other students have essentially aged out while we discuss our options and allow teachers in poorer ZIP codes to do the heavy lifting for the vulnerable students.

The system should baffle us all.

“I also have difficulty accepting the fact that I am required to raise funds for my classroom projects,” Schroeder said. “Because my students are often reluctant to participate in academics — either because they have difficulty with self-confidence, difficulty learning new things, or simply because they have a hard time attending to lessons — I try very hard to make my lessons as engaging as possible.

“I think that it is important that my students know how much I believe that they can succeed in life and grow to do whatever they want to,” she said. “I understand that sometimes it is hard to come to school and participate in lessons, but if they continue to try, they will learn so much.”

Soon after she met her fund-raising goal for STEM kits, Schroeder was back on DonorsChoose raising money for a hydroponic garden center. Her students love lettuce and herbs. The project will allow them to grow enough vegetables to make salad for the entire class.

“I can’t wait to get it going,” Schroeder said.

Susan Campbell is the author of “Frog Hollow: Stories from an American Neighborhood,” “Tempest-Tossed: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker” and “Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism and the American Girl.” She is Distinguished Lecturer at the University of New Haven, where she teaches journalism.