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Overhaul of
education financing formula likely to wait until 2013
By Jacqueline Rabe on August 25, 2011 CTMirror.org
http://www.ctmirror.org/story/13704/overhaul-education-financing-formula-likely-wait-until-2013
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy
has promised to dedicate the 2012 legislative session to education reform, but
fixing how the state finances public schools is likely to wait until 2013, the
co-chairs of the task force responsible for making recommendations to Malloy
said during their first meeting Thursday.
"It's not as though we
have to come up with something for next year," said Sen. Andrea L. Stillman, D-Waterford, the
co-chair of the panel and the legislature's Education Committee.
"I agree," said Benjamin Barnes, the other co-chair of the task
force and Malloy's budget director, calling it "unlikely" for a
complete overhaul of the system in the upcoming year.
"I think it would be very
optimistic to have a complete underwriting of the formula ready," Barnes
said. He indicated after the meeting, however, that he still hoped the state
could begin work on a new way of applying the state's Education Cost Sharing formula.
The task force is planning to
finish its work by October 2012 for legislators and the governor to consider
their recommendations during the 2013 session.
School and municipal officials,
who have been calling on the state to fix the inequities in how schools are
financed for years, were not upset with the news.
"If you're really thinking
about doing something more than a few tweaks, then it needs to be a thoughtful
process. I am not sure you can do that in a few months," said Patrice
McCarthy, general counsel for the Connecticut
Association of Boards of Education.
"It's a reality-based
decision by them," said Jim Finley, president of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities.
"It would be a lot to swallow in a short amount of time."
It would also take a lot of
political will to completely reorganize where and how the state spends money on
education. The state has had numerous tasks forces look at reshaping school
financing, with mixed results depending who you ask.
For the current fiscal year,
the state is set to spend $2.8 billion on education, about 14 percent of the
whole budget.
"It's a big project. It's
a huge undertaking," said Mary Loftus Levine, the head of the Connecticut Education
Association, the state's largest teachers' union, and a member of the task
force. She said she was "happy to hear" and a little relieved that
the panel would not be rushed to come up with a quick solution.
The problems most often raised
with how the state finances education are that the state has not followed the
existing formula for years or provided the required annual increases in funding
for the formula to work as intended. Critics also say the measures of poverty
are too low, rich districts still receive a minimum grant, the figures used to
measure a towns wealth are rarely updated and drawn from aged data and students
attending alternatives to public schools are not paid for adequately.
Barnes and Stillman
said that completely overhauling the formula is an unrealistic goal for the
upcoming three-month session, but minor tweaks addressing some of the
inequities that exist are certainly fair game.
"We will be able to spend
as much time as we need and not feel rushed. We will still have the opportunity
to do some changes if we feel they are needed this next session," she
said. "Let's take our time and do it properly."
Ted Sergi,
the former education commissioner, told the panel that 2013 is a much more
realistic goal so "we don't fool ourselves in trying to meet a January
deadline on this complex issues."