Last Monday, Bridgeport’s Parent Center quietly announced that they’ll be discontinuing all adult education programs due to budget cuts. The week before, Norwalk’s Board of Education voted on a budget that put music lessons, intramural sports and kindergarten paraprofessionals on the chopping block. Hartford’s school board voted for a budget earlier this month that cuts 86 full-time jobs both in schools and in the central office.

For school districts hit the hardest by Connecticut’s inequitable school funding system, things are bad. 

Is there really time to wait two years for a cost study to be performed? Last week, our Governor made it clear he doesn’t think so. 

Should The State Wait For A Cost Study?

Last Wednesday, a coalition of statewide organizations — calling themselves the Connecticut Coalition for Public Education or CCPE —  held a press conference at the Capitol. At the conference, they called on the state to form the Connecticut Achievement and Resource Equity in Schools Commissioner (CARES), which would be in charge of long-term planning to reform the state’s education funding system.

As a part of this plan, the seven-member coalition, which includes the state’s two largest teachers unions, want legislators to commission an education cost study — a study would take about two years and cost the state about $250,000.

Malloy, on the other hand, didn’t mince words when he called this idea stupid — if you’d like to check it out, below is video from the governor’s press conference:

Earlier this week during a press conference on the budget, the Gov. Dannel Malloy was asked about CCPE’s  calls for a study. In response, he said that “the idea that we would wait makes no sense at all.”

“I don’t know what the hell they’re thinking about,” said the governor.

“Listen, we have municipalities in this state that have grand lists over per capita that are as high as $777,000 and we have other communities that have per capita tax base of $45,000. That’s your study,” said Governor Malloy. “Our constitution doesn’t say take another two years to do a study to placate someone who doesn’t want to take the big steps necessary to take the big steps.”

“The time is now.”