In a recent letter to the editor, Alderman David Blackwell spoke upon the funding of the Ansonia School District. In the letter, he explained how, under Mayor David Cassetti, school funding has increased over the past four years.
While this is true, the way that he expressed this data was incredibly misleading, and although funding has increased, so has the percentage of underfunding within the district.
In Mr. Blackwell’s graph, you can see that, throughout the years, funding to the school district has steadily increased. This is fact. What the graph fails to show is how much money was requested by the Board of Education.
Here is Mr. Blackwell’s graph again with that data filled in.
As you can see from this graph, in 2016 and 2017, funding to the Board of Education’s funding dropped significantly, and although one or two percentage points may not seem like a lot, that difference represents hundreds of thousands of dollars. Here is a chart of the graph above.
Under the Cassetti administration, education has been underfunded by nearly $1,159,000 on average, compared to the previous administration that underfunded education about $868,000 a year on average in the same timeframe.
This amount of underfunding of our school system has had damaging effects. There have been multiple teacher layoffs, programs have been cut, and the schools are unable to afford the proper resources necessary to teach the youth of Ansonia in an innovative and efficient manner.
I spoke last May at the budget hearing concerning the Ansonia School District’s funding, and in my speech I spoke of all the wonderful teachers that have inspired to me to do greater things in life, and go out and achieve success that I never thought possible. The teachers and faculty of the district deserve more, and for Mr. Blackwell to say that school funding is not an issue in Ansonia is an insult to them and all of their hard work and dedication to their professions and respective fields of expertise. The youth of Ansonia will soon be the leaders of Ansonia, and it is important that we are doing everything that we can to mold this next generation of leaders into successful, inspired, adults.
The writer, a 2015 graduate of Ansonia High School, is currently serving in the U.S. Marine Corps. The views expressed are those of the individual and not those of the Department of Defense.
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