Schools to Connecticut: Just Show Us the Money

The state Legislature is in session, and it has a long list of priorities, including many that seek better distribution of state education funds.

At a North Canaan school board meeting last week, Region One Assistant Superintendent Thomas Gaisford mapped out the details of what public schools in the state are seeking in the way of education funds funneled (or not) into towns and schools.

The information he presented came from the Connecticut Asociation of Boards of Education (CABE) and is the group’s list of priorities for the 2007 legislative session. The session began Jan. 3 and will end in June.Special Ed Funding Reforms

At the top of the group’s list is an item that is the bane of anyone who has ever tried to devise a school budget: special needs students.

Towns can’t plan ahead for the possibility that a child with special needs will move in. The state guarantees that the town will pay for that child’s education costs and any additional needs (busing, nurses) that are associated with that education. But the state has not followed through with pledges to help pay those costs.

No one is begrudging those children an education. But when a special needs outplacement can cost $100,000, and a town has to raise money on its own to pay that money, special education becomes a budget issue.

At this point, the state reimburses towns for 95 percent of any costs that exceed 4.5 times a school’s per-pupil cost, Gaisford reported.

The new proposal would bring 100 percent reimbursement for costs that are three times higher than the per pupil cost.

Per-pupil costs vary from school to school. Larger schools have lower per pupil costs, because they have more pupils. In Region One, the average per-pupil cost is around $13,000 or $14,000.

The six towns in the Region One School District are North Canaan, Cornwall, Falls Village, Kent, Salisbury and Sharon. The region also includes Housatonic Valley Regional High School.Education Cost Sharing

The state education association is also asking that the state’s Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula be revised.

The ECS was created in 1988 to help equalize education opportunities across the state. In Connecticut, every town pays for its own education costs through money collected from property taxes. Towns with smaller grand lists of taxable property and lower tax "mill" rates get higher rates of ECS funding.

The CABE feels that the formula is flawed and that it should be changed to better reflect that some towns in the state have business and industry, which beefs up their property tax income. Other towns (such as Falls Village) have almost no businesses.Federal Funds Follow-Through

The CABE is also asking for better guarantees of promised federal funds. Federal grants are always difficult for schools to plan around.

Schools and towns don’t know until the budget season has basically ended whether they will get the money they expected. They have to wait until the state and federal budgets have been completed and approved before they know how much they will get for programs such as Title One reading.Also on the Wish List

• In the realm of what could be called unfunded mandates, the state often offers funding for initiatives, then pulls those funds and applies them to new programs.

"They are essentially just moving the same money around. Schools are left with the choice to fund programs themselves or drop them," Gaisford said. "The state needs to continue to fund initiatives."

Otherwise, towns that follow through on state initiatives end up with escalating per-pupil costs.

• Gov. M. Jodi Rell has firmly backed state-funded school readiness programs for nursery schools. That’s fine, Gaisford said, but most of those funds are going to urban areas, and that needs to change.

• A plan to relieve the teacher shortage involves a proposed scholarship program at state universities, and incentives for teachers to pursue certification in more than one academic area.

A program for continued training for new teachers was instituted about 15 years ago. Funding has decreased steadily over that time frame.

The state anticipates that the current shortage of teachers in six areas will worsen in the next five years because of teacher retirements. Shortage areas include high school science and math, foreign languages and special education. There is also a shortage of qualified school administrators.

• Of particular interest to towns such as North Canaan, where a $40-million school expansion is on the drawing board, is a call to drop the prevailing wage requirement that dictates that only union workers be employed on school projects.

If the state is going to require union workers, state reimbursements to the towns should reflect that requirement, Gaisford said.

How many of these initiatives will actually become law, or even earn a spot on the 2007 agenda? Only time will tell, Gaisford said.