Education In Connecticut:

Harsh Realities Ahead

In Connecticut, we tend to think of educational excellence as our birthright. From the founding of Yale in 1701 to the state’s current massive capital campaign to secure a spot for the University of Connecticut in the pantheon of elite state universities, the Nutmeg State has traded on its educational advantages to lure professionals and desirable industry to the state, raising everyone’s income and standard of living. There are some unsettling trends in the economics of education, however, that may threaten our state’s consistent preeminence in education.

It is no secret that the backbone of the state’s education infrastructure, the public school system, faces annual challenges in coming up with enough money to maintain the status quo, much less fund new initiatives to meet the educational needs of a changing world. In our state, that system is heavily dependent on the property tax, and as the state and nation age demographically, the natural constituencies for public education — parents of school-aged children — become a smaller and smaller part of the overall population. Funding local school districts has already become an exercise in uncertainty, and the future does not hold much promise for improvement.

As a result, towns have looked to the state to increase its share of the public education bill in Connecticut, which has slipped over the past 14 years from more than 45 percent in 1990 to less than 40 percent in 2003. (Nationwide, states on average contribute more than 50 percent of the revenues required by public schools.) While the towns are looking to the state, the state is looking to the federal government. In 2003, the federal funding increases helped Connecticut’s legislature realize a difficult budget agreement. The only problem now is that any state looking to the federal government for fiscal relief will be looking into a great big hole for years to come.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the 2004 federal budget deficit will be $521 billion, breaking the 2003 record of $375 billion. The national debt is $7.3 trillion and rising fast. While the annualized percentage change in real federal spending has surged to 4.5 percent from 2000 to 2003 from 2.2 percent from 1983 to 2000, that pace of spending cannot last forever. Whatever the outcome of the Presidential election in November, Congress is going to have to come to grips with reversing the runaway federal spending of the past three years.

Add to that the sobering reality that in 25 years Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will jump from 18 percent of the federal budget to 30 percent. Even political Pollyannas can see that Congress will not be solving the problem by raising payroll taxes or cutting eligibility to these entitlements. With the voting population heavily weighted toward the retirement-age baby boomers, these programs will remain the third rail of politics — touch them and you die. The only alternative for Congress will be to drastically cut the flow of revenue from the federal government to the states. The consequences for educational funding — and the property tax — will be drastic.

Rather than waiting to hit the wall of these harsh realities, Connecticut needs to start planning now if it is serious about continuing its tradition of educational excellence. As hard as it may seem, both the state and municipalities are going to have to do more with less. On the state level, it will mean a rigorous review of state programs to assess their effectiveness and efficiency and a new determination to share the necessary sacrifices equitably throughout state government. This means not giving in when state labor unions demand immunity from cutbacks.

Locally, the challenge will be to maintain support for adequate school financing without driving the property tax into the stratosphere. Support always comes through understanding, so both the school district and the town must work to keep the budgeting process transparent and open to that each understands the needs and priorities of the other. That means better forecasting of enrollments and capital needs, which ultimately requires better planning of the town’s growth overall.

It is a big challenge that will require teamwork, cooperation, and creativity. But this is a highly educated state. We can do it.