Local Government in Connecticut, Third Edition

20. Education: Function, Role, Relationship to Town

ChApTEr 20 Education Function, Role, Relationship to Town Education is such an important function that all levels of government—federal , state, and local—have their fingers in it. Although public education is a state responsibility, delegated to local boards of education, the main responsibility for providing education from prekindergarten through grade 12 lies with local government. Thus board members have a dual status as members of a town board and as agents of the state. In the latter role, they have independent authority, often to the chagrin of municipal officials. The Connecticut General Statutes devote an entire section just to education, and these laws can be found in Title 10 (see appendix H). Free public education is further established as a legal responsibility of the state. Article Eight of Connecticut’s Constitution states: There shall be free public elementary and secondary schools in the state. The general assembly shall implement this principle by appropriate legislation. There is a three-tier state educational system: the University of Connecticut , four state universities (Southern, Eastern, Western, and Central), and twelve community colleges (see appendix D). In addition, there are many private universities and colleges. The role of the federal government in K–12 education is limited; there is no federal constitutional right to free public education. This is left to the states. The U.S. Department of Education does publish regulations that clarify the laws. States can add provisions to further regulate how schools provide services, but they cannot reverse any provision specifically in the federal statutes. A federal report in 2005 stated that the state and local governments provided 83 percent of the costs for local education (U.S. Department of Education , “10 Facts on K–12 Education Funding”). The federal government only accounted for 8.3 percent, with the balance coming from private sources. The federal government has increased its presence in local education in the last 126 Local Government in Connecticut several years. In 1965 Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA-Title I), for economically disadvantaged students. In 1975, Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children (EAHCA), which in 1990 was replaced with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). In 2001 the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation was adopted. NCLB, a reauthorization of ESEA, included a requirement that all states implement an accountability system to monitor school districts to ensure they make adequate yearly progress (AYP) in having students proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014. NCLB also contained provisions on ensuring that all teachers were highly qualified through certification, testing , professional development, or alternative methods to demonstrate subject -matter competency. Education consumes the largest share of the local-government budget; the state average for municipalities is about 59 percent. In smaller communities where there are no paid police or fire departments, education can be over 80 percent of the local budget. As a municipality grows and its services increase, the introduction of paid police, fire, and other services results in a decreasing percentage of the budget going toward education, although the actual dollars for education continue to increase. In these larger communities, education consumes approximately 50 percent of the overall budget. In 2012, the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities (CCM) published Education Finance in Connecticut: Overreliance on the Property Tax. This report addressed the issues of funding for local education. Highlights of the report included: • municipal taxpayers fund 51.4 percent of the cost for local public education; • the state contributes 42.9 percent; • municipal taxpayers pay about 60 percent of Connecticut’s $1.7 billion in special education costs; • the state underfunding of local education has shifted a huge, unfair burden onto the backs of residential and business-property taxpayers; • about $0.62 of every $1.00 raised in property taxes goes toward pre-K–12 public education; • municipal taxpayers pay the bill for numerous other state-mandated education priorities that are not fully funded by the state. In 2012–13, there was $1.9 billion in the state budget for the education cost sharing (ECS) grant. Over the years, the amount of funding has increased, although as a percent of the state budget it has not increased. In fact, ac- Education 127 cording to CCM, the current ECS grant is underfunded by more than $700 million. The major recession that started in 2008 resulted in a “freezing” of the ECS education aid to towns and cities for several years as...