"Hurray For Today and to Hell With Tomorrow" Spending Puts School Districts in tough position

“We’ve enjoyed funding that we have needed for years,” said Leonard Lockhart, Windsor Board of Education member and Vice President of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education.  Mr. Lockhart was speaking of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) money which the federal government printed up just for school districts across the country to use for COVID relief.  Connecticut received $1.1 billion, Hartford received nearly $155 million.

Mr. Lockhart joined other Connecticut school stakeholders in testifying before a State Education and Appropriations Committee hearing this past week, telling the legislators, in essence, our “hurray for today and to hell with tomorrow” spending of COVID relief has set our school districts up for a perfect financial storm.  They came to shame the state legislature into continuing the federal funding received for COVID relief, which will no longer be available after September of 2024 (but that is a Presidential Election year, so, who knows).

Originally set as an information hearing on how the state funds local school districts - which it was, and which was very informative and well done, and I urge all those interested, to view the video of the meeting – the meeting quickly turned into a choreographed hijacking of legislative proposal H.B. 5003.

H.B. 5003 is a proposal by Hartford’s State Representative Matt Ritter, which, as introduced and after an initial drafting, would make changes to how the state funds local education.  This bill would benefit districts like Hartford, as formulas used in determining local funding would be changed to include the “needs” of the student, rather than simple per pupil formulas – yes, plural, they use 11 different formulas.  Also, the bill would require state funding of interdistrict magnet, CREC, and Open Choice tuition and transportation costs.

H.B. 5003 is an equity bill.  Its purpose is to fix the state funding formulas, which should have never been constructed in their present form in the first place.   The bill contains no direct COVID relief life savers. However, after listening to 3 superintendents (HPS Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez not among them), a union president (CEA President Kate Dias, shout out to her, she’s great), a charter school founder, a RESC school director, Mr. Lockhart, and a director of school counselors in Avon, you would have thought that a state match of the fed’s billion-dollar virus rescue was the main purpose of this bill.  Schools are suddenly linking long simmering issue of inequitable funding and “need” with a one-time federal bailout bill.

“Tough position” and “fiscal cliff” were the terms of day as school officials told legislators how they have painted themselves into a corner in the name of disaster relief.  COVID relief funds were used for more than masks and Lysol.  “Salary investments”, “personnel resources,” technology, facility projects, summer programs, and several runs for Chinese takeout, were a few of the common items brought on, started, or upgraded with COVID money.

On Friday, February 3, when the actual Public Hearing was held for H.B. 5003, and for which 188 folks signed up to speak, Lisa Hammersley, Executive Director of the School + State Finance Project, a quasi-government entity disguising itself as a non-profit (like ERS), told the Education and Appropriations Committees that across Connecticut, $400 million of the billion received from Joe Biden, was spent on salaried positions.  During the Public Hearing, East Hartford Superintendent Quesnel warned legislators that if H.B. 5003 doesn’t cover the COVID money received and spent, they will be seeing layoffs and unemployment in their districts.

Stamford Superintendent Lucero said that Stamford has done “wonderful things” with the COVID relief money, and now, without H.B. 5003, they are “not going to be in place anymore.”  As of 2022, Stamford has not returned to where they were pre-COVID on the state’s Smarter Balance math assessment.

Layoffs, things going away, tough decisions, fiscal cliffs forming all over the state like the earth’s continental plates were colliding once again, were the common lessons school leaders were learning when you shop on an empty stomach.  As Kate Ericson, Executive Director of LEARN, an Old Lyme RESC (Regional Education Service Center), warned that the COVID funding may expire, “but the needs of students will not expire.”

And this is where we are.  Chris Leone, a former assistant principal in Hartford, and now Superintendent of Regional School District #6 in Ridgefield, asked the Committees, “how did we get here?”  He stated that these conversations, minus the COVID references of course, are the same conversations held years ago.  The funding issues, he said, “have been perpetuated over time.”  However, he did say that this bill would move the equitable funding conversation further than it has ever been before.

Matt Conway, Superintendent of Derby Schools and President of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents (CAPSS), said that this bill represents “foresight” on the part of the legislature.  That’s good, because they sure didn’t have an ounce of “foresight” years ago when the funding formulas were put in place without being checked by a really good high school math teacher from Derby.

State Rep. Jeff Currey, House Chair of the Education Committee, and Mitchell Pritchett doppelganger, was, at both legislative gatherings, a man of assurance.  He stated that this bill represents “supports that should have been there in the first place,” “we have to step in,” and that this bill will make sure “districts have the funding” once they reach those annoying “fiscal cliffs.” He’s on the record, folks.

The use of state funds to perpetually replace a billion dollar federal relief program, is not just a Connecticut thing, it is trending across the country.  In New York, the group, Advocates for Children of New York, recently told elected leaders of all levels of government that they “need to start planning immediately to address” how schools will fund initiatives started with the “one-time influx of federal education funding.”  Because we didn’t plan at all.

The superintendent of San Antonio schools said that four schools may close if relief from the loss of relief money does not arrive soon.  With federal funds running out he gives the district a year and a half before they run out of money.

Education Week did a story on the national crisis, “Schools Are Heading Into a Perfect Financial Storm.” The must read weekly spotlighted how this storm is threatening the small rural districts as well as the urban districts.  In Perry, NY., population 4,000, summer programing and mental health counseling were two items facing the financial guillotine as federal COVID funds expire.

And where will school districts look next?  Your local City Hall.   School districts in Wilmot, Wisconsin and Warren Township in Indiana are already knocking.  These are among the districts that are asking their local leaders for tax increases due to the decline of tax dollars disguised as federal and state aid.

David Lee Edwards, of Ashland, KY., he didn’t offer testimony on H.B.5003, won $27 million in a 2001 Mega Millions drawing.  He spent and spent until the money ran out.  In 2006 he was broke and living in a storage unit. Dumb, right?