During a Hartford Board of Education Finance Committee Meeting on April 10th,  Hartford Schools CFO Phillip Penn, while sharing data that shows HPS’ “adjusted” budget for 2022-23 is now $50 million higher than the “adopted” budget number, but stating that “the entire deficit will be mitigated by the end of the fiscal year,” also stated that due to a dispute with Capital Region Education Council (CREC), the state is withholding Education Cost Sharing (ECS) dollars from HPS.

Well, Mr. Penn said “dispute” was “too strong of a word,” so he used the word “activity.”   Reminds me of the two neighbors fighting over who owns what piece of land.  It wasn’t a “land dispute,” it was a “ground beef.” 

Despite Mr. Penn’s alternative dispute definition, when you are fighting for millions of dollars, it is not an “activity,” it is a “dispute.”  Call it what it is.  It’s not like you’re calling a student who confessed to making bomb scares a “little shit.”

According to CFO Penn, the dispute centers on residency issues of some students.  School districts that have students choosing to attend CREC schools pay CREC tuition for those students.  Apparently CREC is claiming there are Hartford students attending their schools for which HPS is not paying tuition.  HPS says they are not our kids.

The State of Connecticut says that until HPS and CREC figure out who’s kids are who’s, they will withhold the portion of HPS’ ECS money that would have covered these students as HPS students and which would cover their tuition for the school of their choice.  CFO Penn says that when the dispute is resolved, the State would then send a check to CREC.

One may say that it looks like HPS is not actually on the losing end of the budget stick if the funds being withheld will eventually find their way back to HPS or to CREC for which HPS would have had to pay anyhoo.  Not so fast, budget breath.

Due to the State withholding, essentially cutting, their ECS payment to HPS, the City of Hartford does likewise, cutting the amount of local tax dollars that become HPS revenue, which, according to Mr. Penn, is gone, never to return again.  There is no, “oops, my bad, here’s your check,” once the dispute is settled.

CFO Penn states that the City cannot do this because, like Steve Austin, there are state statutes that say so.  Mr. Penn claims that since HPS is an Alliance District, those districts with the lowest educational achievement rates in the state, state statute says that Connecticut city governments must fully fund their share of the school district, even if the State does not do so.  I know, right?

Mr. Penn says Hartford City Hall has ignored this state protection in the past and HPS has not been fully funded by the City.  Mr. Penn states that “conversations” are needed with the City over this dispute, conversations which apparently haven’t been constructive in the past.  Time to step it up a notch, to a “dispute,” not a “conversation.”

So, how did HPS Board Members present at this meeting respond to this report by CFO Penn?  What dollar amounts are we talking about here?  What are the budget implications?  What are the details of the student residency dispute?  Why does this happen repeatedly?

They didn’t say a damn word.  Perhaps Kim Oliver, who sits on both, the HPS Board of Education and on the CREC Council, filled the folks in out of range of the Zoom camera with information not deemed for pubic tax payer consumption, I don’t know.

The dollar amount could be significant.  HPS requested $101 million for tuition payments for this school year’s budget, not all earmarked for CREC of course.  Expected revenue from the City of Hartford to HPS for this school  year was projected at $96 million.  CREC budget docs indicate that for 2022, revenue from tuition payments was $28 million, and total revenue from Hartford was $35 million.

This sort of “activity” could become part of lurid HPS history if legislative bill H.B. 5003 is passed by the state legislature.  This bill would fix the state’s ECS funding formulas to school districts, which many folks claim has been shorting Connecticut’s schools even well before Governor Dano Malloy used it as a tool to threaten lawmakers to pass his budget.  However, current gov, Ned Lamont, isn’t too excited about this bill, stating, “"We just did the ECS formula in, what, 2017?" 

Apparently, you didn’t do it right.  You can hit the mark and still miss the bullseye - in budgeting and in choosing the right word.