Gov. Dannel P. Malloy may have given an energizing pep talk on education reform to a roomful of education advocates and leaders Thursday, but it was the comments he made to reporters afterward that will likely receive the largest cheers from those who have long said the state is shortchanging education.
"To make some of the progress we need to make in early childhood and teacher improvement, some additional monies are going to have to be expended. So, I believe that districts, and/or the state, are going to have to spend more money," he said.
These comments come as the task force he has asked to re-configure how schools are financed nears the finish line in making some first-round recommendations. That task force is scheduled to meet Friday afternoon and does have a long list of recommendations they are considering.
Malloy and Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor have routinely said more money needs to be directed to the lowest-performing districts, which they have said is about 25 districts.
On Thursday, in backing up the governor's statements, Pryor said the state will begin "focusing resources where they're needed and ensuring the right set of actions occur with the receipt of new funds."
Just how much additional funding Malloy and Pryor are thinking is unclear, but Pryor did get the approval from the State Board of Education for $25 million for new initiatives late last year. He has also indicated that he supports competitive grants -- or a statewide version of Race to the Top -- for these needy districts that make necessary reforms.
Martha J. Kanter, the undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Education, said competitive grants have proven to be a great success.
"Money, it's a great lever of change," Kanter told the educators and policy makers at Malloy's Education Workshop that took place Thursday afternoon at Central Connecticut State University.
But what happens to state funding for the districts that are the highest-achievement or middle of the pack? To say officials from those districts are nervous about their budgets, as Malloy and Pryor continue to tout the need to send more resources to poor districts, would be an understatement.
"Of course we are concerned they're going to yank our funding," said Lydia Tedone, the chairwoman of Simsbury's Board of Education and president of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education. "We don't want them to rob Peter to pay Paul."
Malloy's comments thus far haven't suppressed those concerns of the better-off districts that their funding may be on the chopping block to pay for these low-achieving districts. But if he does intend to cut their funding, he has a huge political hill to climb.
Randi Weingarten, the leader of the American Federation of Teachers, told the crowd those towns with the most money will balk at a reshuffeling of funding the most.
"It's much easier to fight," the national teachers' union leader told the crowd.
And a fight is exactly what Tedone, whose district is one of the wealthier in the state, is gearing up for.
"We have a good relationship with our legislators. We expect them to fight the fight for us at the Capitol to protect our funding... We hope the governor will consider all 161 districts when he is looking at funding, not just the lowest performing."
Cam Staples, a former state legislator and longtime chairman of the Education Committee, said reallocating the existing pot of money could make the most sense, but it's not something Malloy would get easy buy in from those set to lose money.
"Removing funding from districts would be extremely difficult," he said.
In Rhode Island, one of the panelists told the group they had to gradually phase in the "losers" over 10 years.
Dudley Williams, a member of the Connecticut Council for Education Reform, a business-backed reform group, and member of the school financiing task force, responded that he doesn't think that will work in Connecticut.
"I don't think you can have a funding formula where there are going to be losers," he said.
James Finley, the leader of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, offered a solution to avoid creating losers.
"We need more money," he said, estimating a price tag of nearly $800 million a year for state public school to get to where they need to be.
Pryor said according to a recent survey his office conducted, almost two-thirds of the superintendents in the state think the way the state finances schools is unfair.
The Connecticut Lottery was enacted with the intent that all moneys generated were to be earmarked for education. A short time later the legislature transferred most of its earnings into the general fund.
If the lottery were not raided, Malloy would not be picking our pockets for more money to fund education.
I'm sure any extra money allocated to education would go directly toward increasing teachers salaries and not where it counts.
The teachers union had a big ad campaign called "Keep the Promise" where they tried to get a constitional amendment in Conn where the first line item of the budget (before a piece of chalk was bought) was to fully fund teacher pensions. It almost passed but got shot down. That should tell you all you need to know about their priorities for spending. The weird thing is that I know phys ed teachers making 90K and physicists looking for work. Welcome to Conn, home of the high paid, secure, and pensioned public employee..Malloy may talk
Read Moremeant to say "constitutional
" not "constitional"..tough to type on tablet
More money. It's always more money for education. Let's ignore entirely that throwing more money at education solves nothing. Let's ignore that since the creation of the Department of Education we've had more "crises in education" than ever before and we spend $70 BILLION a year on the DOE.
FOR WHAT????
democrats know only two things, tax and spend.
Stupid stupid stupid.
The money is there is the governor's office is willing to do the work and start paying attention to the big ticket items. The number of state managers is ridiculous and they also receive their raises and longevity payments. Somehow they have escaped being part of the Malloy "Share the Pain Campaign". It is easier to go after the little people making the least money than it is to layoff managers. There are no unions to blame for this because the managers are not union. Why are we spending resources and large sums of money looking
Read MoreThese eggheads think that the tax payers are an ATM machine. There is NO correlation between funding and quality of education. It's just another excuse for the highly educated idiots that run public schools to justify their incompetence.
The money question is deeper than just "throwing more money at education and for what?" If you want cheap then put 40+ students in a class with one teacher and say "well enough." The outcome will be lousy but if you're a conservative business type you may be asking "why do I want to educate someone from (insert any urban or working class community here) because I'm going to buy my products from whatever low wage, off shore place I can find?"
In the end it will always be the amount of inputs a school can provide that
Read MoreDrjohn, I already shot full of holes your "education is worse now than in 1980 because of the Dept of Ed." SAT scores are slightly higher now and 20% more people have hs diplomas than in 1980. Can you offer ANY substantive justification for your positions aside from "it's stupid"?
Art and arty, the idea that money will simply go to teacher raises and that a physicist is out of work while a PE teacher is making 90k are boiler plate efforts at demogoguery - Rush Limblaughesque. Salaries are negotiated by the districts and the teachers. It's not a funnel.
Read MoreWhenever a politician admits that they don't know where the money is going coming from, red flags should go up. CTMirror, please do some background investigation into where this money will be coming from.
The General Assembly should be forced to put the casino money, the gas tax money, and the income tax money back into the funds they were originally designated to. The Governor isn't going to do it, so that will be up to us to clean some house and pick some principled leaders to make it happen.
Any discussion about more money for public education should include the fact that the Ct Taxpayers are currently indebted to Ct's public education system in an amount in excess of $13 Billion for unfunded pensions and retirement health care ($9B in unfunded pensions, $2B in unfunded RHC, and $2B in bonded debt contributed to the Pension Trust). These bills are coming due at an accelerated rate.
We've effectively borrowed heavily for the system we have. We're not(and have not been) staying current with the full operating costs of the existing system, and the debate about more money must be made
How much money would we save if we had half as many school districts (157 in a state this small is absurd), half as many town halls, and half as many legislators? We probably wouldn't have a fiscal crisis. We would be able to come to an agreement on things that make sense much easier. And we would have a state that would not be nearly as confusing and complex for businesses considering moving here. We can't afford our parochial, antiquated municipal and state structure any longer. Of course, in the "land of steady (albeit stupid) habits", this will never
Read MoreMalloy, as usual, is back at his game plan. So early in his administration, he is trying to create a cover story which he can use about his shortfalls when he leaves his office, three years down the road, on inadequate funding of school education, and in all other welfare and entitlement programs. I have studied the resources available to various state programs, and have come to the conclusion that all needed programs to serve the real needs of the state could be met adequately with less than 50% of what we are spending now, of course, by taxing
Read MoreSusan Bysiewicz, Democractic candidate for U.S. Senate, during a debate with U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy.
"Susan has been using this tired line of attack for the last year and a half, and it hasn't worked."
Chris Murphy
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