CGA Appropriations Committee

Public Hearing February 14, 2008

HB 5021, AA Making Adjustments To The Budget For The Biennium Ending June 30, 2009

Comments Regarding the Department of Education Budget

Submitted by Katherine Wilson, School Finance Specialist

The League of Women Voters of Connecticut supports a system of public education funding that makes available to each community financial resources sufficient to provide a suitable program of educational experiences to each child.  We believe the state should…

• Fund through grants to towns 50% of the overall statewide cost of public elementary and secondary education.

• Distribute funds in a way that recognizes both the relative ability of different communities to finance schools from local resources and the various factors that influence the cost of educating different children. 

• Target additional funds toward improving academic achievement in communities with concentrations of disadvantaged children. 

The League is disappointed that the governor’s budget adjustments include no improvement to the level of funding provided in FY ’09 for the Education Cost Sharing grant.  At the current slow rate of phase-in, it will take far too many years for the 2007 improvements to the ECS formula to be fully funded, and towns will ultimately find themselves in no better position to pay for the rising cost of education than they were before those improvements were enacted.  The cycle of an under-funded state aid formula driving over-dependence on the regressive local property tax will continue. 

We would like to see the ECS phase-in percentage for FY ’09 increased from the current 23.3% to 35%.  Such an increase would provide real, immediate property tax relief to Connecticut rate payers and make the way we as a state pay for education a bit fairer by transferring more of the burden to the somewhat more progressive state portfolio of taxes.

We would also like to see other, flat-funded education grants increased to reflect both inflation and the very real needs they address.    Specifically, we believe pupil transportation, bilingual education, family resource centers, and adult education should receive raises.  In addition, the Special Education Excess Cost Multiplier should be reduced from 4.5 to 3.0 in order to lessen the impact that the high cost of educating severely disabled children can have on local finances, particularly in very small towns.

If projected state revenues are inadequate to cover the cost of these proposals, the League supports increasing the progressivity of the state income tax.

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