A broad-based coalition of organizations representing municipalities, public school superintendents, boards of education, private schools, Catholic schools, and school bus companies are calling on lawmakers to restore funding for the school transportation grant.
The budget approved by the legislature’s Appropriations Committee eliminates funding for public and non-public school transportation – a direct cut in education funding of almost $28 million per year.
“Although we are pleased that the budget seeks to continue the momentum toward transforming education in Connecticut, we are very concerned about the general level of education funding for municipalities. State funding for education has not increased over the past four years. As a result, many districts have eliminated or reduced instructional offerings, increased class size, postponed capital programs and deferred building and grounds maintenance and repairs,” explained David Calchera, Director of Public Policy for the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents.
“Unfortunately, cutting the school transportation grant will result in more districts cutting or reducing core educational programs and deferring needed capital improvements.”
“Rising local costs, in addition to the increased expectations and related costs for implementation of Common Core state standards, educator evaluation and support, and secondary school reform, are likely to exceed any increase in the education cost sharing grant this year,” said Richard Murray, First Vice President, Connecticut Association of Boards of Education (CABE). “As a result, eliminating the school transportation grant will have a devastating impact on education across the state.”
“Under Connecticut law, transportation is considered part of a student’s right to a free public education. Eliminating funding for school transportation imposes a multi-million dollar unfunded mandate on our towns and cities,” said Jim Finley, Executive Director and CEO of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities (CCM). “Coupled with other budget cuts, the elimination of this funding will shift more of the burden onto property taxpayers to fund education.”
“For many small towns, school transportation funding is a big chunk of their education budget,” said Betsy Gara, Executive Director of the Connecticut Council of Small Towns. “Unfortunately, state aid to small towns has been flat funded for a number of years now although the cost of providing services and programs has increased significantly. As a result, every dollar of state aid that gets cut will result in higher local taxes or the elimination of vital programs and services.”
Organizations representing private and parochial schools also oppose cuts in funding of $2.9 million for non-public school transportation.
“Approximately 67,000 students from Connecticut families attend non-public schools. When you consider the cost of educating these 67,000 students, Connecticut’s non-public schools provide the state of Connecticut significant tax relief,” said Douglas Lyon, Executive Director, Connecticut Association of Independent Schools (CAIS). “Slashing funding for non-public school transportation will jeopardize the successful model that has been built to educate our students.”
“Every day, Catholic schools in Connecticut fight to keep the tuition costs down for our 37,000 families. And our schools save taxpayers of the state of Connecticut about $450 million each year in education costs because our students are not attending public schools. Cutting funding for transportation for private and parochial schools will make it difficult for us to continue to provide quality educational opportunities for our students,” said Michael Culhane, Executive Director, Connecticut Federation of Catholic School Families.
The budget replaces the school transportation grant with $5 million in funding for a regional competitiveness grant to incentivize districts to regionalize transportation services.
“We are concerned that real savings cannot be achieved by moving to a regional transportation grant. Instead, this proposal will massively disrupt school transportation by eliminating funding,” said Leslie Sheldon, Operations Manager for All Star Transportation and Vice President of the Connecticut School Transportation Association (COSTA). “There are many aspects that go into the establishment of transportation systems in a given town, including the school calendar, school start times, collective bargaining agreements, sports and club schedules and the number and location of schools and students,” Sheldon explained.
The coalition urges residents to contact their lawmakers to support restoring school transportation funding.
