Advocates say Bridgeport Public Schools’ proposed budget won’t change student outcomes if it doesn’t get additional state and local aid.
That’s according to Sarah Eagan, the executive director for the Children’s Center for Advocacy, a non profit law firm focusing on education in Connecticut.
Bridgeport’s City Council voted Monday, approving over $340 million for its school district. But Eagan and others say the money doesn’t keep up with inflation.
“The City Council's vote does not give nearly enough money to Bridgeport public schools, so everything remains catastrophically, life changingly, underfunded for kids in our highest need communities,” Eagan said.
Board of Education Vice President Joe Sokolovic said the city is considering giving an additional $3 million to the schools. Sokolovic said it would take tens of millions more for the city to match per-pupil spending with wealthier towns nearby like Greenwich.
Members of Bridgeport Generation Now Votes, a civic advocacy group, agree that more money from the state is needed to fund the schools. The group says parents have already complained about staff cuts.
The district is also requesting an additional $25 million from the city to make up for lost funding during the 2024-2025 fiscal year according to its proposal.
Salaries and benefits make up most of the budget, but special education enrollment has risen over the last few years, and many of those students require additional services which drive up costs.
According to Eagan, the city lacks enough qualified instructors and staff for children with disabilities, and the budget could open the city up to additional lawsuits.
“Children with disabilities are a protected class under the state constitution, and they are entitled to specific services under federal disability law and special education law, and failing to provide that leaves the city and perhaps even the state vulnerable to civil rights action by advocates,” Eagan said.
Sokolovic said Mayor Joe Ganim is likely to sign the budget.
Bridgeport Generation Now Co-Directors Callie Gale Heilmann and Gemeem Davis blamed Ganim for the school’s budget woes over the last decade and said the schools would likely need to make additional cuts.
At least 80 positions have been cut so far since current Superintendent Royce Avery took office in November.
“We need 64 million from the state of Connecticut,” Heilmann said. “If they don't give us 64 million, there's nothing to do. It's a fact that we will be looking at closing schools.”
Ganim pushed back on those claims, criticizing Bridgeport Generation Now Votes’ complaints as politically motivated.
The group has long opposed Ganim’s mayoralty and frequently criticizes the mayor, most recently over alleged electoral misconduct during the 2023 mayoral primary.
Ganim also criticized the Board of Education and emphasized the state’s intervention with the city’s BOE earlier this year, that much of the funding woes are the fault of the board.
He and his deputy chief of staff, Constance Vickers, said the state has increased its funding for the schools by $30 million a year since 2019. Ganim said the city has given additional funding as well.
“People just want to criticize and misappropriate or mismanage money, that part's got to stop if we're going to move our district to the next level,” Ganim said.
Sokolovic blamed much of the school’s budget woes on the city and the state’s unwillingness to increase funding. He says he's made that complaint for years, and said City Council complaints over the BOE’s management of finances reflects badly on them.
“A couple of council members said they don't know where the money's going, and if they give us more money, what are we going to do with it,” Sokolovic said. “They answer that question. It's always when you got a deficit, first thing you got to do is shore up the deficit, and you can't add any services without filling that entire hole.”
But, according to the CT Mirror, the Connecticut lawmakers are still deliberating on state aid for local school districts. They have until June to do so, when the current legislative session ends. A proposal for additional money for special education would take effect the next school year.
State Sen. Sujata Gadkar-Wilcox who chairs the state legislature’s special education committee said she along with her counterparts are pressuring the governor to loosen the state’s fiscal guardrails but said there’s one key issue.
“Part of the uncertainty is when that should happen, because until the federal budget is set, we don't know what other potential cuts may be coming down the line,” Gadkar-Wilcox said.
Skolovic said the city has some of the lowest per-pupil funding in the state. He said Bridgeport would need around an additional $80 million to match per-pupil funding with school funding in the nearby town of Greenwich.
