Olha Yarynich

In March, Mayor Justin Elicker traveled to Hartford alongside more than 75 New Haven public school students to testify in support of a bill in the state legislature that would increase the base amount the state pays per student for public education.

On Tuesday, after the Appropriations Committee released its recommended biennial state budget, Elicker and New Haven Public Schools Superintendent Madeline Negrón called for Connecticut to loosen its fiscal guardrails — constitutional limits on spending — further to support public schools in a rare joint press release.

“We are facing a funding crisis in public education,” Elicker and Negrón’s statement read. “We urge Governor [Ned] Lamont and the State Legislature to work together to loosen the state’s fiscal guardrails so that Connecticut can make the collective investment we need to support our students and their future.”

In the last decade, Connecticut has implemented strict financial guidelines to prevent excessive spending, pay down the state’s looming pension liabilities and bonded debt and save for emergencies. These fiscal guardrails have come increasingly under fire amid federal cuts and pressure from local leaders to increase state funding for public schools.

In his February budget proposal, Lamont called for minor changes to the fiscal guardrails — namely, raising the state’s volatility cap — to allow for a historic investment in early childhood care and increased state support for special education. 

In recent weeks, Lamont has also raised the possibility of declaring a state of emergency so that the state can circumvent the fiscal guardrails to make up for potential federal cuts to Medicaid. He has not proposed the same for federal education cuts.

Senate President and New Haven Senator Martin Looney released a joint statement with House Speaker Matt Ritter in support of the Appropriations Committee’s proposal.

“The pressures from every sector in our state have grown significantly,” the two legislators wrote. “The budget produced today represents an honest attempt to catch up and move forward.”

Looney and Ritter praised the committee for advancing Lamont’s recommendations for adjusting the fiscal guardrails.

However, Elicker and Negrón called for more dramatic changes to the fiscal guardrails.

Their statement applauded the committee’s $40 million investment in special education programs, but they criticized the state for relying on local property tax increases to prevent cuts to public school education in Connecticut.

“There is something fundamentally wrong with the way our state funds our public schools when school districts all across Connecticut … are all looking at massive cuts to education,” the statement read. “Municipalities cannot and should not make up the difference for [the] state’s chronic underfunding of our schools, especially in light of seven – soon to be eight – consecutive years of state budget surpluses.”

In particular, the mayor and superintendent called for the state to adopt the provisions of the bill Elicker testified for in March, Senate Bill 1511, which was referred to the Appropriations Committee on April 1. If passed, the legislation would increase the state’s per student base amount and provide greater support for multilingual students, students in poverty and students with disabilities.

Without increased state support, Elicker and Negrón wrote, NHPS is facing a $17 million deficit to maintain basic services in the coming school year. The district had a $2.3 million deficit last year, before the city covered it with surplus property tax revenue and leftover federal pandemic funds.

John Carlos Musser, one of the NHPS students who traveled to Hartford with the mayor in March, expressed great frustration with the state’s approach.

“It would be a different conversation if the state didn’t consistently break surplus records. They sit on billions of dollars while my fellow students sit in moldy classrooms with leaky roofs,” he wrote to the News. “I am honestly terrified.”

Musser serves as a non-voting student member of the New Haven Board of Education.