State Legislators Offer Little More Than Sympathy To A School Bd Looking For Money

By Tanjua Damon

Newtown’s state legislators could do little more than offer sympathy and share the frustration of the Board of Education when it came to offering hope for additional state educational funding this year. The school board is looking for money to fund eight new teachers that have been left out of this year’s school budget by the Legislative Council. What it got from the legislators was a mini-lesson on the legislative process in Hartford.

Newtown’s legislators, State Senator John McKinney and state representatives Julia Wasserman (106th District), John Stripp (135th District), and Pat Shea (112th District), listened as Superintendent of Schools John R. Reed asserted that the state has backed out in helping suburban towns with funding their education.

“At the local level we don’t have anyone to pass it on to. When they reach local municipalities, we either curtail services or raise taxes,” Dr Reed said. “We see in Newtown [that we are] caught in between the super wealthy and districts that obviously have far less wealth than Newtown.”

Newtown has been receiving less state aid according to a February 2000 report of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities that looked at data from 1996 to 2000. During this time period, state aid to education has decreased by 12 percent and state aid to Newtown on a per pupil basis has dropped 24 percent. But local educational spending has increased by 23 percent.

“We used to get 24 percent. Now we get less than 10 percent. The state has walked away from its financial obligation to Newtown,” Dr Reed said.

The state legislators sympathized with the school board, but explained that the Legislature, where big cities have the most clout, is not currently stacked in Newtown’s favor.

“Not only are you seeing less dollars, you are seeing your pupil costs decreasing drastically. The state hasn’t taken away from the towns, but the cities have. There are winners and losers in this situation,” Sen McKinney said. “We need to form a coalition that stops this trend. If you do this there are going to be losers. The only way we can have long term change is to change the formula. I don’t see how we’re going to do that.”

Legislators do not see a change in the formula of how districts receive money happening any time soon. There are at least 22 elements that are looked at before deciding how much money will be received.

“They are not going to touch the formula,” Rep Wasserman said. “There is a slim chance Newtown will get a little bit more.”

Rep Shea, who sits on the education committee, told board members that it is very difficult to get enough consensus to change the formula used to provide state aid for local education.

“We look every year at how to change that formula. Nothing changes,” she said. “We cannot get it out of committee. That formula has been tweaked so many times along the way that it certainly does a disservice to us.”

When casinos were allowed in Connecticut the money from them was supposed to go for education, but that never happened, according to Sen McKinney.

“If we spend more money, somebody is going to have to get more revenue,” he said. “In Connecticut, despite great times and great revenue which is fueled by income tax and capital gains, we see revenue gains flattening. We see the economy flattening. We need to slow down and not spend so much money.”

Rep Stripp told the board that all small towns are having these difficulties of receiving less and less money from the state, requiring towns to rely on property taxes.

“The truth of the matter is there isn’t a lot of money,” Rep Stripp said. “I will try to get more money for all my towns. The pressure is on all the towns.”

Continuing to rely on property taxes to support education may cause may towns to run into difficulties down the road, according to Dr Reed.

“There are assumptions and there are assumptions. If the state is not fulfilling its implied responsibility, they have a choice to do the hard job. Property taxes is not a rational way to support education,” Dr Reed said.

Unfunded mandates are particularly troublesome for local school districts. Federally mandated special education is one example.

“The federal government has unleashed this tiger, but has forced [us] to feed it,” Rep Stripp said. “Special education is pulling from money that would go to ‘normal’ students. It’s causing a real, real problem.”

Vice Chairman Vincent Saviano lamented that it is pretty sad when you are looking for money to pay for the electric bills and do not have enough money to hire teachers that are needed.

“We’re talking about basic needs. We’re not talking about new programs or fancy buildings,” Mr Saviano said. “We’re talking about basic needs.”