by Jamil Ragland CTNewsJunkie
HARTFORD, CT – The leaders of the five largest cities in the state and legislative leaders from both houses gathered at the Legislative Office Building to share their vision for the future of education funding and housing in this year’s legislative session.
Each mayor was accompanied by the superintendent of schools for their city. In attendance at the first conference were Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam and Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez; New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker and Superintendent Madeline Negron; Bridgeport Mayor Joseph Ganim and Acting Superintendent Dr. Royce Avery; Waterbury Mayor Paul Pernerewski and Interim Superintendent Darren Schwartz, and Stamford Mayor Caroline Simmons and Superintendent Tamu Lucero.
“I think for all of us behind this podium and all of the policymakers in this building, we understand that building a strong and vibrant state starts with building strong and vibrant schools, especially in our cities and across the state,” said Hartford mayor Arunan Arulampalam. “What we lack is not structure or personnel, what we lack are the resources to turn those schools into centers of excellence where every child who walks through those doors can believe in a brighter future.”
The mayors and superintendents took their policy prescriptions from the 119K Commission’s Young People First report, produced with support from the Dalio Foundation and the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. The report calls for the state to revamp the educational cost-sharing formula (ECS) to increase the weighting of high-poverty districts, increase the weighting for multi-language learners, and to create a weighting for special education. These weights trigger additional funding for districts that serve higher numbers of students with high needs.
Mayors Joseph Ganim of Bridgeport, Paul Pernerewski of Waterbury, Arunan Arulampalam of Hartford and Justin Elicker of New Haven. Credit: Jamil Ragland / CTNewsJunkie
Mayor Elicker said that 83% of the students in the state’s largest cities are identified as students with high needs, compared to only 55% for the state average.
“We heard from the governor’s state of the state address that our North Star is affordability and opportunity,” Elicker said. “And I think we all can agree that the most foundational component of opportunity is a high-quality education. The reality is right now that across the state, many of the districts that serve our high need students are not able to provide a full opportunity for our young people. And the consequences are very clear as well. When we under-invest in our students, they pay and we pay as a society both now and later. And we’re seeing the impact of those consequences across the state with so many disconnected youth that could be able to work on a better path if they had more resources.”
Lucero said that without more funding, she and the other superintendents will have to choose between offering instrumental music to children, or whether every kindergarten classroom will get a paraprofessional.
“As a state, we can do this if we decide that we are going to work towards it and put the resources towards it,” she said. “There are some amazing things going on in all of our school districts, and because there are so many amazing things going on the superintendents and I and our mayor face a challenge every year. We have to make some really hard decisions when our budgets get cut and everyone has to think about that. We are very big on access and opportunity for our students to get everything that they need but the problem is that we have to make really hard decisions if, indeed, the state funding doesn’t come in completely, the federal money does not come in completely.”
Later in the day, Democrat legislative leaders from both the House and the Senate announced their priority legislation for the beginning of the session. Senate Bill No. 1 is designed to help municipalities with the growing cost of special education, a particular concern that municipal leaders have brought to the General Assembly’s attention.
House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said that special education costs consume 30% of educational spending in the capital city.
“The biggest driver of municipal budgets is the Board of Education, and the biggest driver of the Board of Education budget is special education. I know the mayors from the cities were all here, I told [Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, D-New Haven], I joked that when I see all the mayors I get nervous, because they’re up to something, and they normally are for the right reasons, but we could do more for municipal budgets and property tax stability. Probably one of the things we could do more than anything is take a hard look at special education.”
Rep. Maryam Khan, D-Windsor, chair of the special select committee on special education, reiterated the need for the ECS to include a special education weight as a reform to help cost burdened municipalities, in addition to other suggestions to reduce excess costs which drive up spending as well.
“Right now, excess costs is the only way that we at the state level fund special education. So we should be looking at the structure and funding level of excess cost. We should be incentivizing in-district programs for special aid students over out placements. In-district programs cost a lot less. They have certified staff and we have oversight already through local Boards of Education.
Khan also said that the committee should look at retention and recruitment efforts, as special education is the number one short-staffed area in the state of Connecticut.
Democrats also introduced Senate Bill 12, which Senate Democrats described as legislation to increase the production of all types of housing in the state.
“We need to build more affordable housing not only in the urban areas that do have affordable housing now, but need more of it, but also of course in the suburban and rural towns that in many cases have been resistant to that and have not been willing to accept the responsibility of being one single state in Connecticut in terms of a mix of housing,” said Sen. Looney.
He also said that one of the great challenges facing the state is that cities need to get larger. He pointed out that there are no large cities in Connecticut, although the cities do have the same challenges that urban areas have throughout the country, with the additional challenge of lack of compelling numbers and compelling size.
“So we are hoping to continue to provide ways of creating diversified housing stock in our cities, more affordable housing, more market housing” he said. “The city of New Haven needs to get bigger, Hartford needs to get bigger, Waterbury and Bridgeport need to get bigger as well in healthy ways that will make them more vibrant and more self-sustaining.”
Rep. Jason Rojas, D–East Hartford, said that another aspect of Connecticut’s housing crisis is dealing with older stock that is insecure, unsanitary and unsafe.
“East Hartford is one of those towns where the vast majority of our housing is pre-1950,” he said. “Those are smaller units, they are older units. They definitely have lead in them. You see that in Hartford, you see that in Bridgeport, you see New Haven, you see it in lots of our core urban areas as well as our inner ring suburbs as well. So it’s also about replacement housing when people question whether we need it or not, because our population is stable.”
Multiple reports have shown that Connecticut is in bad shape when it comes to housing. A report from Consumer Reports in July 2024 considers Connecticut the worst state for renters due to high costs and low availability, with a high income-to-rent ratio dinging its results.