Following a decision by a Superior Court judge, soon to be reviewed by the state's Supreme Court, that the Democratic Party constructed system was unconstitutional, Malloy was moved to radically alter state funding of education in Connecticut, and the Democratic product was made more progressive. “On average,” Fox news reported, “22.24 percent of municipal expenditures are funded with revenue from the state. The 54 non-alliance towns with a greater reliance on state funding, above the 22.24 percent statewide average, will receive a portion their Fiscal Year 17 ECS [Education Cost Sharing] grant, and the 85 municipalities that have a lower reliance on state funding will receive no ECS grant.”
Malloy cut state education funding 100 percent to zero in 85 municipalities, presumably “rich” municipalities, and moved those funds to presumably “poor” municipalities. By way of comparison, the Republican budget, the only one affirmed by the General Assembly, cuts funding to UConn by 18 percent. In Connecticut, the poor municipalities include Connecticut’s three large cities, long-time Democratic bastions, such as Hartford, now on the brink of declaring bankruptcy, Bridgeport and New Haven. State education funding permits the party in power in the General Assembly to favor their own voting blocks.
Now, it so happens that Hartford, under the unreformed system, was given more money by the
state in education funding than, say, New Canaan, swimming in wealth. So it is
not strictly true that the apportioning of state education funding favored all
rich towns at the expense of all poor towns – which would be the case if
educational funding were supported entirely through property taxes. Were that
the case, Hartford would have declared bankruptcy decades ago. The state of
Connecticut off-sets, through compensating tax grants, revenue lost by the state’s
larger cities because some properties are tax exempt, which is one reason why
per pupil expenditure is greater in Hartford, a poor community, than New Canaan,
a rich community.
If one considers the distribution of educational tax
dollars, the present system, fashioned by a Democrat dominated General
Assembly, is not unconstitutionally inequitable. If one considers the
educational product, however, Connecticut’s public school educational system is
dramatically inequitable: test scores of students graduating from New Canaan
High School are much higher than equivalent test scores of students graduating from
Hartford’s public school system. New Haven, of course, boasts that its Amistad Academy,
which draws from the same pool of students as New Haven’s public schools,
scores higher than New Canaan and produces college graduates at a slightly higher
number than New Canaan. Successful charter schools in Connecticut
are under financed by 17 percent, a financing gap written into the statutes
that created the state’s charter school system.
Successful charter schools such as the Amistad Academy are living rebukes to failing public school systems in Connecticut’s larger cities.
Underfinanced, they produce a superior educational product and challenge the
notion that students in inner-city public schools cannot succeed because their
social situations are disruptive – which, of course is true. Many studies show
a causal connection between the successes in school of African American boys in
particular and the presence of working fathers in households. Many other
studies show that success in public school is not determined principally by
pupil expenditures. Catholic parochial schools in cities spend far less per
pupil than public schools, and the success rate in parochial schools is far
more impressive. St. Augustine, Hartford's last Catholic school, closed several
months ago, and Achievement First, which runs several successful charter
schools in Connecticut’s inner cities, including Amistad Academy, will be
opening no more new charter schools in the state because the state consistently has shorted successful
charter schools by 17 percent.
Connecticut’s problems are largely political; the worst kind
of party politics snakes through nearly all Democratic policy prescriptions.
Democrats do not want to surrender their voting advantage among state union
workers or among party activists in the state’s larger cities. That is why a
bailout for Hartford rather than bankruptcy proceedings, which would clear the decks
for a more efficient municipal government, will be the last resort for failing
Democratic urban hegemonies. It is why Malloy pushed contract obligations
favorable to union interests forward to the year 2027, having previously lashed former
Governor John Rowland for doing the same thing.
It would be a challenge worth accepting by Connecticut’s
media to count up the number of times the state’s mess-makers have rejected
Republican reforms – including a major reform that would allow the legislature
to regain control of its constitutional obligations through changes in statute
rather than crippling contract arrangements – by arguing that necessary
reforms cannot go forward without “violating contracts.”
Malloy’s hot mess has been caused by destructive, single
party power politics and abject surrenders to favored factions that are incompatible
with the greater good of Connecticut.
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