Dear Editor:
These days any government program is lucky to be fully funded. Yet is it too much to ask for public education in Connecticut to at least be fairly funded?
It took a lawsuit and Superior Court Judge Thomas Moukawsher to hold Hartford accountable for the unfair and unjust way that state grant funds have been allocated to schools like Ansonia.
This week Judge Moukawsher held that Connecticut’s education cost-sharing program is unconstitutional, and that our state “has no rational, substantial and verifiable plan to distribute money for education aid.”
Officials in Harford now have 180 days to come up with a new funding formula. This is an opportunity. Let’s make it our job to ensure that Ansonia is not forgotten this time around.
Just how bad of a deal has Ansonia gotten under the current funding scheme?
Consider that the affluent Fairfield school district received 147 percent of its supposedly needs-based allocation in the last fiscal year.
Greenwich (164 percent), Guilford (181 percent), Madison (212 percent), Old Saybrook (190 percent), Waterford (208 percent), Westbrook (217 percent), Weston (171 percent) and Westport (149 percent) are a handful of other wealthy school districts that took more than their fair share.
By contrast Ansonia received 74.2 percent of what it should have received in the last fiscal year.
In real numbers that’s about a $5 million shortfall between what our schools received and what the cost sharing formula called for. While wealthy communities took more than their share, Ansonia schools got shirked.
Sadly, Ansonia is not the only needy community getting left behind. Bridgeport (80 percent), Derby (63.4 percent), Hamden (60 percent), Naugatuck (85 percent), Seymour (72 percent), Shelton (34 percent) and Waterbury (72 percent) are in a similar position: underfunded while more affluent districts are overfunded.
Local officials here in Ansonia have stepped up to mitigate the funding disparity. I am proud that my administration has averaged a 3.5 percent increase in education funding over the past three years, up dramatically from an average of 1.8 percent over the eight years prior.
However, we must face reality.
It is unfair to expect Ansonia taxpayers to shoulder the ever-increasing burden of unfunded mandates imposed by Hartford on our schools.
Especially when Hartford refuses to fairly follow the rules designed to ease that burden.
I therefore call on Ansonia’s officials and residents to join me in calling for a state funding system that addresses the needs of Ansonia. It’s only fair.
Mayor David S. Cassetti
ANSONIA
