Danbury Mayor Becomes President Of CCJEF

Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton has assumed his duties as newly elected president of the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education.

Officiating at this year’s annual CCJEF meeting, Mr Boughton praised coalition members for their strong commitment, broad-based leadership, and determined advocacy for furthering education adequacy and equity goals on behalf of Connecticut schoolchildren, parents, and taxpayers.

Mr Boughton and the City of Danbury are among the founding members of CCJEF.

Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez and former Manchester Mayor Steve Cassano, CCJEF’s vice president and executive director, respectively, both praised Mr Boughton for his outstanding leadership skills and his courage in taking on the difficult challenges the coalition faces. Attorney Carl Amento, former mayor of Hamden and CCJEF’s founding president, enthusiastically nominated his successor, pointing to Mr Boughton’s distinguished record of being an effective problem solver, an experienced educator and public servant, and a proven leader. His election by the coalition’s membership was unanimous.

The Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding is a broad-based coalition of municipalities, local boards of education, statewide education associations, advocacy organizations, parents, and others intent upon modernizing the state’s fiscal infrastructure necessary for ensuring suitable and equal educational opportunity for all Connecticut schoolchildren.

Further growing CCJEF membership is part of Mr Boughton’s action plan. CCJEF communities currently represent about 40 percent of the Connecticut population and educate more than two-thirds of all minority, poor, and limited-English-proficient public schoolchildren.

The Yale Law School Education Adequacy Clinic provides pro bono representation of CCJEF and 16 named plaintiff schoolchildren and their parents in an education adequacy lawsuit filed in November 2005. That case is now moving forward through the courts.