Connecticut Speaker Pushes for School Funding Change

House Speaker Brendan Sharkey wants to see more discretion in spending by local school boards.

Current state law doesn't allow local boards of education to cut more than .5% of their budget unless they get special permission from the State Department of Education. Rep. Sharkey says that doesn't make any sense.

“You know we’ve done the charts and run the numbers and just about every school system in the state has lost population over the last five years. In some cases in significant numbers, and yet their budgets have increased significantly in that same period of time" Sharkey said during an interview Wednesday.

His proposal wouldn't do away with what are known as MBR's, Minimum Budget Requirements, but it would instead allow school systems to have more discretion with their budgets overall. With dwindling enrollment figures, Sharkey says it make zero economic sense to keep spending more money because a law says you have to.

“This ensures quality education around the state and no one is state we should get rid of the MBR but given the fact that we’ve had decreased enrollments over the past five years with projections for it to go higher and beyond, why not match the budget to meet enrollment?”

According to data provided by the Office of Legislative Research and the Department of Education, enrollment and population have decreased in the vast majority of state school districts over the past five years. During that same period of time, spending has gone up in most of those districts as well. While the funding sources range from local property taxes and state revenues to federal grant funds, spending increased by more than 30% in some districts.

While school enrollments decreased in places like Wallingford, Berlin, and Southington, they each increased spending by 16%, 40%, and 20% respectively.
Rob Rader with the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education said of Sharkey's proposal,

“We’re not against that if the board of education is in favor in their community but we’re always concerned about across the board decisions.”

Sharkey says he's optimistic his measure will pick up support as the session continues.

“All we’re saying is in these tough budget times we should be looking to lower property taxes wherever possible and just spending money on education when it’s not justified by enrollment numbers, just doesn’t make any sense.”
 

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