by Donald Eng CTNewsJunkie
WETHERSFIELD, CT — Funding took center stage Tuesday as the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education (CABE) presented its list of legislative priorities for the upcoming General Assembly session beginning next week.
Patrice McCarthy, CABE’s executive director and general counsel, described education in Connecticut as “an army of individuals trying to provide the best possible education for our state.”
She said it wouldn’t come as a surprise that the group’s priorities centered around funding, starting with the basic foundation level of funding needed to provide an education to an average student in an average Connecticut community.
The problem, she said, is the current freeze on federal funding that, given the ever increasing costs of goods and services, makes it impossible to maintain such a foundation.
She added that the special education excess cost grant, designed to be a safety net for districts against having a handful of high-needs students, also has been capped.
“The fact that the net has been capped means that safety net has holes in it,” she said.
Meg Scala, president of the Portland school board, said local boards of education are currently in their budget season and struggling with the potential increases of between 5% and 9%, which she called a huge burden.
“Families are struggling to meet their basic needs, so we really have to address these issues as we go forward,” she said.
Aside from funding, McCarthy said, another issue is a state mandate that all school buses be electric-powered by 2040.
“The challenge for districts is that this is not physically possible,” she said.
Aside from the cost of electric buses, which she said is higher than conventional vehicles, is that there simply won’t be enough charging stations and buses to meet the mandate.
“We are urging the legislature to postpone and phase in implementation of that mandate,” McCarthy said.
Among the other issues, McCarthy said experience had shown that cell phone use in schools was manageable at the local level, and the association did not support a bell-to-bell mandated ban on cell phone use in schools.