Lamont Creates Education Funding Commission Amid Pressure

Ned Lamont signed an executive order Thursday creating a commission on education funding and accountability, drawing a split response from the educators, municipal officials and advocates who watched him do it: appreciation for taking on a stubborn problem, and pointed skepticism that a study will deliver what Connecticut school districts need before the legislative session ends.

The signing of Executive Order 26-3 came with three weeks left in a session that has yet to decide how to spend $500 million informally set aside to address affordability pressures, including sharply rising education costs hitting municipalities across the state. For many in the room, the commission is welcome in principle and insufficient in practice.

Lamont named Natalie Wagner, his deputy chief of staff, to chair the commission. The governor said the choice was deliberate, meant to signal “the importance we put upon this program” and to ensure the exercise produces an actual blueprint rather than a report that “ends up sitting on a bookshelf.” Commission members will include legislators selected by Democratic and Republican leaders, the state commissioner of education, teachers, parents, students, municipal officials and state and national experts in school finance.

Wagner acknowledged the breadth of the coalition assembled for the ceremony, some of whom have previously clashed with Lamont over his fiscal approach. “Education funding has never been without significant challenges, and finding a path forward rarely involves a simple solution,” she said. “The governor is bringing us all together to work on these challenges.”

The commission arrives against a complicated backdrop. Lamont, a Democrat running for a third term, proposed in February creating this body as part of a budget that makes no significant changes to the Education Cost Sharing formula, the primary mechanism for distributing state aid to local schools. That formula has not been adjusted for inflation since 2013, a fact that has fueled years of frustration among educators and town finance directors alike.

Support for revisiting the formula is widespread. But the urgency driving that support is precisely why many who welcomed Thursday’s ceremony also refused to let it pass without a warning.

Lisa Hammersley, executive director of the School and State Finance Project, put it plainly. Her organization will “always welcome thoughtful and collaborative examinations of our state’s education finance system,” she said, but added: “Make no mistake about it, the establishment of the Blue Ribbon Commission should not be treated as a hall pass to not take meaningful, sustainable action this legislative session. As legislators have heard from thousands of students and taxpayers this session, Connecticut’s school districts and municipalities need help now.”

That tension cuts directly through Fairfield County, where the gap between the wealthiest and most stressed communities is as visible as anywhere in the state. Bridgeport, which has spent years fighting over education funding adequacy in the courts and in Hartford, sits miles from Westport and Greenwich, communities that spend lavishly on their schools from local property tax bases that most Connecticut towns could not replicate. The ECS formula was supposed to narrow that divide. A formula frozen in time, critics argue, only widens it.

The commission faces a narrow window before the legislature must adjourn at midnight on May 6. That deadline focuses the immediate fight on what happens to the $500 million in affordability money, not on the longer-term commission work. Advocates are pressing lawmakers to move on education aid in the remaining weeks regardless of what the commission eventually recommends.

For Lamont, the commission serves a dual purpose. It demonstrates engagement with a systemic problem that every governor since Lowell Weicker has tried and largely failed to solve, while also deferring the hardest choices past a budget cycle and into a campaign year. Whether legislative leaders allow the first to substitute for the second will become clear as May 6 approaches.

What is not in dispute is that Connecticut’s school finance system needs structural attention. The state ranks among the top nationally on aggregate education outcomes, but those averages obscure deep inequalities. A commission that produces real recommendations would be useful. Whether this legislature acts before it adjourns is the question nobody at Thursday’s signing ceremony could yet answer.