Danbury must prioritize education again
Danbury is once again moving through the budget cycle, and as has been the case for years now there is considerable and passionate dialogue around the proper funding of our school system. It’s quite the discussion, considering our city is ranked dead last in per-pupil spending across the state.
It is time to get at the roots of this problem.
The repeated refrain, agreed upon from all sides, is that our school district is being underfunded by the state of Connecticut. This is an indisputable fact. But there is more to this story than the state failing to assume financial responsibility.
In between the budget announcement on April 2nd, the ad-hoc committee meeting on April 9th and the Public Hearing on April 15th, I spent some time examining Danbury budget data from the last couple of decades. And this closer look reveals that the city has been slowly eroding its investment in the schools as well.
Looking back at numbers from the 2009-2010 budget cycle, a total of 55.3 percent of the budget was devoted to the Board of Education. In fact, budgets from the years 2001-2002 through 2009-2010 are almost all that level or higher, reaching above 56 percent at certain points.
In the last 10 years, this percentage has declined steadily, dipping as low as 50.2 percent in the 2014-2015 budget cycle. This year, it crept up to 52.4 percent, the highest percentage in seven years.
If we assume a flat 55 percent of the approved budgets should be going to the Board of Education, which is representative of how the city used to allot funds, the last 10 budgets have resulted in a shortfall of nearly $65 million for the school system. That’s an average of almost $6.5 million each year of existing funds that the city chose to pull away from our schools.
It is of great concern that the state is not giving Danbury its fair share of education funding. They are up in Hartford making decisions which impact us without a full understanding of the challenges we face.
But here in Danbury, we know that our enrollment has gone up over 1,000 students in the last decade and that there are projections for roughly 700 more students in the next 10 years. Here in Danbury, we know the sizable Alliance Grant which comes from Hartford is the result of being one of the 33 lowest performing districts in the state — and our seven schools of distinction (a measure of improvement, not achievement) reflect a strong desire to change that dubious honor. Here in Danbury, we know that our teachers and staff regularly work overtime, spend their own money and make other personal sacrifices to put our kids first. And we also know that despite those Herculean efforts, it simply cannot make up for inadequate funding.
So what’s hard to process is this: The city knows that the state is shortchanging us on education funds. And yet the city has deliberately diminished its own contributions to the district at the same time, even though everyone here has a seat, front and center, to the growing demands on our school system and the reality that we are lagging behind.
At the meeting on April 9th, members of the City Council were repeatedly asked to reconsider the mayor’s proposed budget and to appropriate more funds toward education. This is a call for the city to prioritize education again and recognize the importance of investing in the next generation of leaders and workers for Danbury. There is an opportunity here to repair some of the damage we’ve contributed to, and I hope they will take it.