Impact On Newtown—

State Falls Short In

‘Race To The Top’

By Eliza Hallabeck

Just a month after the state passed school reforms, including one that will affect Newtown, Connecticut fell out of running for the federal education Race To The Top grant program at the end of July.

According to Superintendent of Schools Janet Robinson, Newtown will be feeling the effect in the form of roughly $160,000 over the next four years.

“The amount of money we were going to get was inadequate for what we were going to be mandated to do,” said Dr Robinson on Wednesday, August 4.

The money would have been at least something to help cover the effort Newtown will be mandated to do anyway, said Dr Robinson, but now no funds will help support the state mandate to increase credits at Newtown High School for graduates by three.

At the end of the legislative session, Governor M. Jodi Rell signed a landmark education reform package into law that was aimed at bolstering Connecticut’s efforts to win $175 million in federal funding under President Obama’s Race to the Top education initiative.

To make the state more competitive, the legislature created a new teacher evaluation system, increased high school graduation requirements, and strengthened charter schools, among other steps. That law, state officials said, would give the state a stronger hand as it applied for a share of the $4.3 billion pot of federal Race to the Top funds.

This was the second application the state made for the Race To The Top program, and, as Dr Robinson presented to the school board at the time, for Newtown the original application did not require an increase of credits at the high school. Now those extra credits, more classes and in combination more teachers, will have to be available to students at the high school by 2014, according to Dr Robinson.

“The first application they made to the Race To The Top,” said Dr Robinson, “I did not recommend to the school board to support it. We were only going to get $16,000 a year. I mean that didn’t even pay for the cost of accounting that had to go with it.”

Now the roughly $160,000 that would have helped Newtown support adding classes at high school will affect the school budget starting next year, according to Dr Robinson.

“We have a deadline to meet these requirements,” said Dr Robinson. “So we’re going to have to start in next year’s budget.”

Eighteen other states — including New York, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts and the District of Columbia — were chosen to advance to the next round, with 10 to 15 grant winners expected to be identified in September.

(A CT Mirror story, “Connecticut Out of Running for Key Education Grant” by Deirdre Shesgreen, was used for this story.)