Courtesy of Lenny Speiller

As students returned to class in New Haven on Thursday, New Haven Public Schools are starting the school year with an unusually large budget deficit. 

After requesting a $17 million increase in city funds to maintain the previous year’s programs, the New Haven public school system received only a $5 million increase to the previous $203,263,784 budget. In June, the Board of Education approved a tentative budget that sees New Haven Public Schools enter the year with a $2.3 million deficit. The deficit must be made up through staffing changes as the year progresses.

“This is not just a New Haven issue,” Leslie Blatteau ’97 GRD ’07, president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers, said.

Many urban districts across the state face similar challenges, even teacher layoffs, as $1.7 billion in federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, funds from the pandemic expire this year, many of which were being used to support urban school districts across Connecticut. Many local leaders blame the state for the crisis. 

According to New Haven Public Schools Communications Director Justin Harmon, the crisis is caused by the disparity in property tax funds for public school districts between wealthy suburbs and urban areas in Connecticut and the expiration of ESSER funds.

Harmon praised the efforts of New Haven’s legislative delegation in Hartford to advocate for New Haven Public Schools, but emphasized the challenges disproportionately impacting urban schools in the state, including child poverty, learning disabilities and a need for more English language programs.

The district is trying to avoid layoffs through a technique known as “right-sizing,” which involves shifting staff from schools with lower enrollment to schools with higher enrollment and eliminating vacant positions. Harmon expressed optimism that New Haven Public Schools will be able to close the $2.3 million deficit as the year continues, but cautioned that “unforeseen circumstances” could make this difficult. 

Superintendent Madeline Negron has made clear that she will do everything she can to avoid layoffs, but Harmon acknowledged that they are still a distinct possibility if mitigation efforts fall short. 

“There’s no guarantee that there won’t be layoffs,” Harmon said. “Our highest priority is to preserve teaching jobs.”

Even if mitigation efforts do succeed, eliminating vacant positions may lead to larger class sizes, as vacant teaching positions will force schools to assign more students to each teacher. The New Haven public school system is limited by a 2023 contract with the New Haven Federation of Teachers from raising standard class sizes above 26 students for grades K-2 and 27 students for grades 3-12 until 2026. The same contract binds New Haven Public Schools to significant yearly salary increases for teachers.

“When people retire, we don’t necessarily fill the positions. When people resign, they don’t necessarily fill the position,” Matt Wilcox, vice president of the Board of Education, said. “And when you don’t fill positions, you end up with less people, and less adults in the building, which means less people teaching and working with the students.” 

According to Harmon, the Board of Alders and Mayor Justin Elicker — who also serves as chair of the Board of Education — are supportive of New Haven Public Schools, though this support may not be enough. Since his time in office, the city’s contribution to New Haven Public Schools has increased “dramatically,” Elicker said. The city increased its contribution to New Haven Public Schools by $8 million in the 2022 fiscal year and $5 million in this current fiscal year. 

However, Blatteau told the New Haven Independent in May that New Haven Public Schools made up 31 percent of the then-draft budget, down from 37 percent in 2010. 

Elicker pointed to Connecticut’s uniquely decentralized, municipality-first approach to education funding as a key culprit. Connecticut has no counties and no regional government with taxing power. This leaves urban municipalities like New Haven with little support.

“[We] are responsible for funding the education of only [our] children, whereas in other states, you have more people, sort of a wider pool of people, that are paying into the system that makes the system funding more equitable,” Elicker said.

Elicker argued that a regional approach is not only “the right thing to do,” but in the interest of all Connecticut residents. Sharing the cost of education in urban areas would boost the earnings of “the most vulnerable students,” increase tax revenue and save money on expensive services and programs to address crime, he said. 

Elicker praised New Haven Public Schools for spending ESSER funds on non-permanent staff, avoiding many of the challenges facing school districts like Hartford Public Schools, which has now been forced to lay off staff.

Nevertheless, with the expiration of ESSER funds, contractual increases in staff salaries and higher utility costs, the New Haven public school system has been forced to limit programs that supported after-school care, summer programming and smaller class sizes. 

Elicker also emphasized other unique challenges facing cities like New Haven and the failure of state funding models to account for the disproportionate burden of addressing homelessness, crime and housing crises that suburban municipalities do not have to fund. 

“Every year since I’ve been mayor has been a struggle financially, both for the city and public schools,” he said. “We have our hands tied behind our back as to how we collect revenue, and on the other side, we support the state in so many ways that suburban communities aren’t required to.”

In particular, Elicker called on Governor Ned Lamont, who sought to limit education spending in the Spring 2024 legislative session, to lead on this issue. 

“There’s a real opportunity for us to dramatically change how Connecticut funds education, and I think the governor deeply cares about our young people, and there’s an opportunity for him to show that through a meaningful change of policy about the fiscal guardrails of the state,” Elicker said.

Rep. Jeff Currey, chair of the Connecticut General Assembly Education Committee, acknowledged that the issue is deeper than the expiring ESSER funds.

Currey blamed years of inequitable approaches to education funding at the state level for the chronic underfunding of school districts like New Haven Public Schools. Before the introduction of the ECS formula in 2017 and its implementation in 2019, state education funds were distributed to municipalities via block grants. Municipalities only received what their representatives could hunt down in Hartford.

Currey also praised New Haven’s investments in education and described New Haven Public Schools’ budget deficit as hardly unusual given the reality of chronic underfunding across the state. 

Budget challenges this school year will have a serious impact on students, Michael Morton, deputy executive director for communications and operations at the School + State Finance Project said. Extracurricular programs and accelerated courses face cuts and layoffs. So do counselors, social workers, mental health programs and teachers themselves. 

Even where budget gaps do not lead to layoffs, Morton said, teachers and students will feel the impact the most.

Morton also identified the large presence of tax-exempt landowners like Yale in cities like New Haven as a drag on education funding. Property taxes, he argued, need to be rethought statewide and at a local level.

“It is the state’s responsibility to address the decades of underfunding that have occurred, and it’s also the responsibility of the state and municipalities to work together to rethink how we fund education in Connecticut, where there is such an overreliance on property tax revenue, where it is far easier for a district or for a community that is higher wealth, lower need to fund its public schools than it is for a community that is lower wealth and higher need,” he said.

Wilcox compared the funding of Wilbur Cross High School in New Haven to Staples High School in Westport, a comparable comprehensive high school in a much wealthier municipality.

According to the state’s report card, Westport spends $24,681 per student at Staples annually. New Haven spends $18,689 per student at Wilbur Cross. Staples has around 185 staff for 1,626 students. Wilbur Cross has around 138 staff for 1,721 students. 

“I don’t think a Westport kid is any more deserving of a good education than a New Haven kid, but when you look at these numbers, this exists in Connecticut,” Wilcox said.

Middle school world language teacher positions in particular will be cut, Blatteau said. These classes are critical in a diverse city like New Haven and can help motivate students to come to school at a time when the New Haven public school system suffers from chronic absenteeism. 

Blatteau expressed confidence that Negron’s approach would avoid teacher layoffs, but acknowledged that other staff have already faced layoffs.

Wilcox emphasized that New Haven Public Schools teachers and staff remain committed despite these challenges.

“One thing that gets lost in money and people wanting to say who’s to blame for this, or that is just acknowledging that regardless of the funding challenges, regardless of just some of the structural issues in the United States in terms of structural racism and poverty, etc, you have groups of people that just give it their all. And I think that’s something that is always good to highlight,” he said.

New Haven Public Schools is the second-largest school district in Connecticut. 

Correction, 08/30: This story was corrected to reflect recent efforts by Hartford Public Schools to minimize teacher layoffs after previously announcing hundreds of layoffs.