Bridgeport Schools Request $106M Budget Increase

Bridgeport Public Schools is asking for $106 million more in next year’s budget, and district leaders say the alternative is another round of cuts that would hit classrooms already stretched past reasonable limits.

The Bridgeport Board of Education voted 6-2, with one abstention, to send the funding request forward earlier this month. The number is large, but those tracking the district’s finances say it reflects years of accumulated damage, not a single year’s problem.

The district serves roughly 20,000 students on an annual budget of about $294 million. Without new state funding, officials warn they are looking at a projected $45 million shortfall this year, a gap that would force further staffing reductions and program cuts on top of what the district has already absorbed.

The recent history is grim. In November 2024, Bridgeport schools announced a $38 million deficit for the 2024-25 school year. The causes were familiar: federal COVID relief funds had expired, city funding had remained flat, and special education costs kept climbing. District officials said they would close that gap by drawing down $14 million in reserves, shifting $6.5 million in expenses to grants, and cutting more than $10 million from operations.

That wasn’t the end of it. In April 2025, the school board voted for another round of reductions. The cuts eliminated 20 teaching positions, removed kindergarten paraprofessionals, ended bus service for more than 2,000 students, eliminated a performing arts program and cut every librarian in the district.

Those are not abstract budget line items. They are reading support for kindergartners, a bus ride for a fifth grader, an after-school rehearsal that kept a teenager connected to school. District leaders and advocates have spent years making exactly this argument, and the numbers have kept getting worse.

Interim Superintendent Royce Avery has taken the case to Hartford. He joined superintendents, administrators, students and community members from across Connecticut recently at the State Capitol to advocate for changes to the Education Cost Sharing formula, the mechanism the state uses to distribute school aid.

“This morning’s event is an opportunity for collaboration across Connecticut,” Avery said at the Capitol. “You have superintendents, their administrative staff, students, community members and the faith community all here in Hartford advocating for ECS funding increases, to make sure that we can push our legislators and the governor to provide additional” support.

The ECS formula has long been a source of tension in Connecticut, where some of the wealthiest school districts in the country operate within driving distance of some of the most underfunded. Bridgeport sits at the center of that contrast. The city’s schools educate a student population with high levels of poverty and significant special education needs, while the tax base that funds local education cannot come close to matching what towns like Westport or Greenwich generate on their own.

That disparity is not new, and Bridgeport is not the only district sounding the alarm. But the scale of the ask, $106 million on top of an existing $294 million budget, signals that the district believes incremental adjustments are no longer enough.

The risk of inaction is concrete. Districts that burn through reserves, cut programs and eliminate positions tend to enter a cycle that is hard to reverse. Teachers leave. Families who can leave, do. Enrollment drops, which reduces state aid, which triggers more cuts. Bridgeport has been fighting that cycle for decades.

Whether the state legislature and Governor Ned Lamont respond with meaningful ECS increases will shape what Bridgeport classrooms look like in September. The district’s budget request is a public statement that the current path is not sustainable. The response from Hartford will determine whether the next school year brings more of the same or something different.