CT House Speaker Confident Schools Will Get $170M Boost

Legislative Democrats are pushing for a $170 million boost to Connecticut public school funding this year, with House Speaker Matt Ritter expressing confidence Monday that Ned Lamont can be brought on board.

The figure represents a step up from the $150 million House Democrats were discussing roughly a month ago, and a significant jump above the $100 million floor Lamont offered last week. That offer itself marked a shift for the fiscally moderate governor, who had included no such additional funding in his February budget proposal.

Ritter, a Democrat from Hartford, says he believes the legislature can push the governor further.

“I am confident we can get the governor to be comfortable with that number,” Ritter said, referring to the $170 million target.

One question still unresolved is whether the money flows through the formal state budget or gets channeled through a separate funding mechanism. Education advocates have raised alarms that a side-pot approach could produce a one-time infusion rather than a permanent commitment. Ritter pushed back on that concern directly.

“If we pay for 170 [million] in ECS and then next year say, ‘We didn’t mean it, it was one time,’ you’d get zero votes for that concept,” Ritter said.

ECS, or Education Cost Sharing, is the primary state grant formula that funds Connecticut public schools.

Republicans have put forward their own plan, which they say would net schools $335 million. That proposal relies partly on prevailing in a legal dispute with New York over work-from-home income tax receipts, and partly on eliminating health coverage for some undocumented residents. Neither piece of that funding base is guaranteed.

Ritter’s announcement came hours after a broad coalition of municipal leaders converged on the statehouse to demand more state aid. The message from mayors, administrators, teachers and city officials has been consistent all spring: the state’s school funding formula is broken, and rising costs have outpaced what the formula delivers.

Joe DeLong, executive director of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, was blunt in his assessment of the $100 million floor Lamont initially offered.

“Let me tell you, $100 million put into education this year is probably a D-minus,” DeLong said. He added that he considers $180 million a floor, not a ceiling.

The pressure behind those words is real, and it lands hardest in smaller towns and cities that depend most heavily on state aid. Mary Calorio, president of the Connecticut Council of Small Towns, said the ECS grant once covered roughly 25 percent of many small towns’ education costs. Now, she said, it covers closer to 15 percent.

That 10-point drop doesn’t disappear. It shifts to local property taxpayers.

“Education comprises the lion’s share of our local budget. It often exceeds 70%, almost 80%, of the total municipal spending,” Calorio said. “That’s a big gap for them, for our property taxpayers, to absorb, and there’s nowhere else for the towns to go.”

For communities across Fairfield County, the math is painfully familiar. Towns like Bridgeport operate schools where state aid is not supplemental but essential. Wealthier suburbs still face spiraling costs in special education and employee health insurance, two categories that have eaten deeper into local budgets with each passing year. What the state doesn’t cover, the town has to find somewhere, and that usually means property taxes go up.

The governor has moved off his original position, which offered nothing in new school funding at all. The Democratic majority in the legislature wants more than the $100 million he has now endorsed. Advocates want more still.

Where this lands before the legislative session closes will shape school budgets, property tax rates, and classroom resources for the coming year. The spring budget negotiations in Hartford have a way of compressing quickly once the calendar tightens, and this year the pressure from municipalities is louder than it has been in some time.

Ritter’s confidence is notable. Whether it proves justified will be clear within weeks.