By LOUISA OWEN SONSTROEM
Chronicle Staff Writer
thechronicle.com
WILLIMANTIC — By mandating Windham school district improvements and then cutting funding to that same district it purportedly wants to help, the state may be doing about as much harm as good.
At least that’s the fear school officials have regarding the district’s share of state dollars.
Concerned about a net reduction in proposed state funding to Windham public schools, Windham Board of Education Chairman Murphy Sewall has submitted a letter requesting reconsideration.
“The net effect of your proposed education budget will decrease state funding for the already substantially underfunded Windham School District,” Sewall wrote in a letter mailed Friday to the state legislature’s appropriations committee.
This 56-member committee is responsible for all state appropriations and agency budgets.
As the state deliberates over budget appropriations for municipalities, state agencies and more, towns and districts such as Windham must form and attempt to pass budgets without knowing what to expect from Hartford, whose proposals are still shifting and may do so until June.
Currently, Sewall explained, the state’s proposal would be to leave Education Cost Sharing (ECS) funds for Windham at the same level they have been since 2007-08, meanwhile cutting out school transportation subsidy funds for a loss to Windham of about $311,000.
Funding to Windham would be raised by $200,000 through the Alliance District grant allotment, but Sewall explained the overall effect on Windham would be to cut funds by more than $100,000.
Windham Middle School may well receive an undisclosed amount of additional financial assistance if accepted into the Commissioner’s Network later this year, but that assistance would be used exclusively for the middle school and would not benefit the rest of Windham’s children.
“Hence,” Sewall explained in an e-mail to the Chronicle, “the net effect of the appropriations committee’s proposal is in the opposite direction of the state intervention in Windham that is being directed by Special Master (Steven) Adamowski.”
Writing on behalf of the local board of education, Sewall cautioned the appropriations committee against cutting much-needed funding for a district struggling as much as ever and for a district partway through a state intervention.
“The Alliance Network funding and other grants have helped,” he wrote, “and the efforts of Special Master Steven Adamowski have been extremely useful in improving student performance a little in the face of declining real resources, but the district is far short of what is actually required to achieve the level of improvement required by the Department of Education and desired by Windham’s board of education.”
As Sewall explained in his letter, Windham has the lowest percapita grand list in Connecticut and is among the state’s poorest municipalities.
The school district has one of the largest achievement gaps in the state and Adamowski’s arrival in Windham in 2011 was intended to help improve student performance.
By mandating improvement through a state intervention on one hand and then decreasing resources with the other, Sewall said, the state is undermining its own efforts to assist Windham.
“ Solving this problem is not rocket science. We know what to do,” Sewall wrote. “The issue is that what needs to be done requires resources that are not being provided.”
Despite the district’s need for funding, he said, local taxpayers are reluctant to pay more each year while the state pays less.
Sewall requested more state funding in the short term.
In the long term, he said, the state should look into combining some of the state’s school districts.
“No doubt the legislature receives numerous requests for justified appropriations, but resources are limited,” he wrote. “Why then does Connecticut continue to waste large amounts of resources on widely acknowledged inefficient school districts?
“The number of districts in the state far exceeds an economically rational number. Waste exists not only in redundant administrative costs but also in too many school buildings with excess capacity,” he wrote.
“A long-term solution will include overcoming the inertia that supports five to 10 times as many school districts as Connecticut should have,” Sewall stated.
“Hence,” Sewall explained in an e-mail to the Chronicle, “the net effect of the appropriations committee’s proposal is in the opposite direction of the state intervention in Windham that is being directed by Special Master (Steven) Adamowski.”
Writing on behalf of the local board of education, Sewall cautioned the appropriations committee against cutting much-needed funding for a district struggling as much as ever and for a district partway through a state intervention.
“The Alliance Network funding and other grants have helped,” he wrote, “and the efforts of Special Master Steven Adamowski have been extremely useful in improving student performance a little in the face of declining real resources, but the district is far short of what is actually required to achieve the level of improvement required by the Department of Education and desired by Windham’s board of education.”
As Sewall explained in his letter, Windham has the lowest percapita grand list in Connecticut and is among the state’s poorest municipalities.
The school district has one of the largest achievement gaps in the state and Adamowski’s arrival in Windham in 2011 was intended to help improve student performance.
By mandating improvement through a state intervention on one hand and then decreasing resources with the other, Sewall said, the state is undermining its own efforts to assist Windham.
“ Solving this problem is not rocket science. We know what to do,” Sewall wrote. “The issue is that what needs to be done requires resources that are not being provided.”
Despite the district’s need for funding, he said, local taxpayers are reluctant to pay more each year while the state pays less.
Sewall requested more state funding in the short term.
In the long term, he said, the state should look into combining some of the state’s school districts.
“No doubt the legislature receives numerous requests for justified appropriations, but resources are limited,” he wrote. “Why then does Connecticut continue to waste large amounts of resources on widely acknowledged inefficient school districts?
“The number of districts in the state far exceeds an economically rational number. Waste exists not only in redundant administrative costs but also in too many school buildings with excess capacity,” he wrote.
“A long-term solution will include overcoming the inertia that supports five to 10 times as many school districts as Connecticut should have,” Sewall stated.
No comments:
Post a Comment