Testimony Before the Education Cost Sharing Task Force October 25, 2011 Secretary Barnes, Senator Stillman, members of the task force, on behalf of the League of Women Voters of Connecticut, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to address you this evening. The League has a long history of supporting both increased state aid to public education and a more equitable method of distributing such aid. To that end, the League believes the following broad principles should govern the state’s role in funding education. The system of public elementary and secondary education in Connecticut should provide a suitable program of educational experiences for each child and should make available to each community sufficient financial resources to support that level of educational services. To that end…
School Finance Specialist CGA Appropriations Committee Public Hearing March 24, 2011 SB 1195 AAC School Finance Reform Comments Submitted by Katherine Wilson, School Finance Specialist The League of Women Voters of Connecticut appreciates the opportunity to comment today in opposition to SB 1195, An Act Concerning School Finance Reform. This bill would reshape the way education is funded in Connecticut, primarily by revamping the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) grant, which currently provides approximately $1.9 billion in aid to municipalities, about 78% of the funds they receive from the state in support of local public elementary and secondary education. It would alter the variables that go into the ECS formula, the way those variables are determined, their operation within the formula, and the mechanism for determining both the state share of funding and how funds are distributed among towns. It would also require school districts to contribute significantly to the cost of educating students who leave their home districts to participate in the Open Choice program or to attend magnet and charter schools. The League believes such drastic changes to such an important grant deserve more thorough, more broad-based, and more public study than this proposal—raised only eight days ago—has received. We prefer the approach taken in HB 6385, AA Implementing the Budget Recommendations of the Governor Concerning Education, which establishes a task force representing key stakeholders and including school finance experts to study issues relating to the ECS formula and other means of state funding for education. This task force would report back to the governor by January, 2012, allowing enough time both to be thorough and to implement changes by FY ’14, as contemplated in SB 1195. We hope the task force’s work will lead to a revised aid formula that –
Thank you for allowing us to share our ideas with you today on this important legislation. Testimony on Proposed Budget, HB 6380 03/01/2011
CGA Appropriations Committee Public Hearing March 1, 2011 HB 6380 AAC The Budget for the Biennium Ending June 30, 2013 Comments Submitted by Katherine Wilson, School Finance Specialist The League of Women Voters of Connecticut welcomes the opportunity today to express our general support for the governor’s budget recommendations regarding state aid to local public elementary and secondary education. We are particularly pleased that the governor has honored his campaign commitment to maintain funding in 2012 and 2013 for the $1.9 billion Education Cost Sharing grant, the mainstay of state support for local schools. Our hope for the longer term is that the proposed task force to study issues relating to the ECS formula and other means of state funding for education, as outlined in a bill currently before the Education Committee, will lead to a revised aid formula that –
With respect to other grants, we recognize that flat-funding is probably the best the state can do in the midst of the current fiscal crisis, but we are especially concerned about the impact of the long-running cap on the special education Excess Cost Grant, which will deprive districts of an estimated $30 million in 2012 and $43.6 million in 2013. This cap can be especially devastating to a small district, where the addition of one or two severely handicapped students can wreak havoc on the local budget. Thank you again for your consideration of our ideas on this most important legislation. LWVCT Testimony on HB 6431 and HB 6432 02/28/2011
CGA Education Committee Public Hearing February 28, 2011 HB 6431 AAC The Minimum Budget Requirement HB 6432 AAC Closing The Academic Achievement Gap Comments Submitted by Katherine Wilson, School Finance Specialist The League of Women Voters of Connecticut appreciates the opportunity to comment today on HB 6431 and HB 6432. HB 6431 – The League does not support this bill. We believe a minimum budget requirement for 2012 of no less than the amount budgeted for 2009, three years prior, would reasonably take into account both current fiscal conditions across the state and any savings generated by the items listed in subdivision (2) against the rising cost of goods and services purchased by school districts. Furthermore, we are concerned that the actual savings generated through health plan changes, interdistrict cooperation, regionalization, joint purchasing, and “other budgetary efficiencies” would be extremely difficult to document and that administering these provisions would place an additional burden on both the State Department of Education and local districts for which for which they are receiving no additional funding. HB 6432 – The League applauds the basic notion of establishing an ongoing task force charged with developing a comprehensive, statewide master plan to eliminate the academic achievement gap by 2020. We do, however, have concerns about specific aspects of the bill: Section 1 – The task force should include representatives from local school districts of all sizes and demographic characteristics. It should also be required to report annually and publicly to the Education Committee on the implementation of the master plan, rather than just receiving periodic reports internally from the Interagency Council for Ending the Achievement Gap as currently proposed in Section 2(b)(3). Sections 3 and 5 – Are there adequate resources within SDE’s 2012 budget to develop the model Pre-K to grade 4 curricula in reading and mathematics specified in Section 3 and to establish the Cultural Resource Center envisioned in Section 5? Section 4 – The additional accountability reporting requirements placed on districts with achievement gaps are supported by no additional funding. What constitutes a reportable achievement gap should be more precisely defined. Section 8 – Despite the addition of $1.16 million for school readiness in each year of the governor’s proposed budget, the requirement that priority school districts provide universal school readiness spaces and full-day kindergarten by 2013 appears onerous in light of the proposed $4.64 million and $5.12 million reductions to the PSD grant. Thank you again for your consideration of our ideas on these important pieces of legislation. Testimony to Education Committee on HB 6385 02/23/2011
CGA Education Committee Public Hearing February 23, 2011 HB 6385 AA Implementing the Budget Recommendations of the Governor Concerning Education Comments Submitted by Katherine Wilson, School Finance Specialist The League of Women Voters of Connecticut appreciates the opportunity to comment today on the governor’s budget recommendations concerning education. We have thoughts in three specific areas. Section 14 – The League supports the establishment of a task force to study issues relating to the ECS formula and other means of state funding for education, as outlined in this section of the bill. We hope this work will lead to a revised aid formula that –
Section 15 – The League supports the minimum budget requirement described in this section. We believe it is not unreasonable to require districts to spend in 2012 and 2013 at least as much as they did in 2009, given the rising cost of education. Section 16 – The League supports the provision in this section that would allow local and regional boards of education to opt out of inheriting the operations of regional vocational-technical schools located within their jurisdictions. We have concerns about the long term funding implications of the proposed transfer of these schools to local control, despite the administration’s stated intent that it be cost neutral. Vo-techs have been 100% state funded, while local schools are funded only in part by the state and have never even been funded as required by the state’s own aid formulas. We have difficulty believing that a similar pattern of underfunding will not prevail once the state sheds its operational responsibility for these schools and that under this scenario they will not ultimately add to the education costs and property taxes of local communities. Thank you for allowing us to share our ideas with you today on this important legislation. | Advocacy:
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